After The Storm

So you're probably wondering just what happened to me as a result of the freak snowstorm that hit the northeastern United States October 29.  Ughh, where do I begin?

A couple of days before the "October Surprise" shocked us Northeasterners, it was expected to be a typical October snowfall (not unheard of in this part of America), a light coating to a couple of inches with some rain mixed in.  No big deal.  A winter weather advisory was issued for the part of New Jersey that I live in. Nothing as devastating as, say, a hurricane. At one point, in fact, this storm was supposed to miss us altogether.

It all turned out very differently.  What happened was that the rain changed to snow earlier than expected and the snow came down harder than expected.  The weather advisory for my area was upgraded to a storm warning at virtually the last minute.  Some parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania got warnings without the customary watches preceding them.  Cold air was funneled in from Canada at the very moment the storm, having formed off the coast of North Carolina from different rain bands, began racing up the coast.  Once the snow did start falling, it weighed down the branches and limbs of trees, many of which still had their leaves and thus could not take the strain of the heavy white stuff.  My house briefly lost electricity twice before it went off a third time . . . and stayed off for three days.  The cable service briefly went out once, then again for just as long.  

Because this storm took everyone by surprise - unlike Hurricane Irene, which everyone expected - few people in the greater New York area prepared for it.  For Hurricane Irene, I stocked up on batteries, put everything outside (lawn chairs, hoses, et al.) away, and made lots and lots of ice.  This time, I was only able to buy enough batteries for my portable radio and quickly compose drafts for my blogs that I could still post  from a PC at the local library later in case I lost power at home.  But the more important preparations - getting ice for perishable food and the like - proved to be impossible given the short notice we had about the storm's intensity.

One thing I did manage to do the day before the storm hit was remove some tree branches from the overhead wires connected to my house and clear a few branches from another tree (both red maples, by coincidence) growing into the main wires along the street.  Removing the branches over my wires prevented them from being brought down, which would have meant my mother and I might have been without power longer.  But removing branches growing into the main wires was a useless gesture.  No branches from our property collapsed onto the main wires, but a limb from our neighbor's oak did . . . and it took down most of the wires plus the insulator supporting the top wire.  It wasn't until the wires were re-attached the Tuesday after the storm (November 1) that my mother and I got our electricity and our cable service.  In between losing and regaining both services, we had to deal without heat at night, conserve what little hot water was left (I had to shower in the local community center at least once), and make calls on our cell phones.  My mother and I constantly checked the hourly outage reports on WCBS-AM, the local news station, and as we heard the number of outages in our service area drop, we got increasingly annoyed that we were still in that number. 

Wednesday went along without incident, but the power went off again for three hours on Thursday morning.  So, after returning from the library, I went out and bought some ice. I got home and opened the door to bring the ice in, and the power was still off. I went back to the car, I got the ice, and when I went back in the house, the power was back on.  It was that kind of week.

Anyway, I'm glad that's all over.  But  there's still a lot of damage to the trees in my neighborhood and everywhere else.  So many treetops and limbs got destroyed that the area looks like Hiroshima after the bomb.  Halloween celebrations on Monday had to be cut back or postponed all together, most trick-or-treaters going out the following Friday. The streets and avenues are littered with so much debris everywhere, and the cleanup (which started in my town today, fortunately on my street first) could take weeks.  It could take until April or May in most towns to inspect the trees that bore the brunt of the storm to check for additional damage.  I myself spent several days afterward cleaning up the mess around my house, which was light in comparison to what our neighbors had to deal with.  Our biggest problem was a tree from a vacant wooded lot owned by the township we live in that cracked in two and collapsed into our back yard.  The remains of it are still there, and the township says we're responsible for the part of the tree that fell on our property (i.e., most of it).

But at least the all of the snow has pretty much melted.  :-D Now we can get back to autumn. And I hope the only things that fall from the trees from here on are the leaves.  

After The Storm

I'm back, and even though nothing happened to my mother and me as a result of Hurricane Irene, the storm did plenty of damage in my neighborhood as well as other parts of New Jersey.

My house escaped damages and power failures, though the electricity did flicker a bit the day after the hurricane passed (August 29) while the electric company was working nearby. It seems two trees fell and took down electrical wires on either end of the avenue behind ours, cutting it off both directions. The electric company and the police department worked together to clean up the mess. Both trees were cleared and both sets of wires were restored in less than a day. All I had to clean up were tree branches in the backyard.

The Passaic River, a major river in New Jersey that goes around the town I live in, flooded to historic proportions. Two car dealerships in the next town were flooded, as well as much of that same next town. U.S. Route 46 (which only goes through New Jersey despite its federal designation) crosses the Passaic four times because the river flows in an upside-down double-U pattern, and so that highway is closed at many points.

While the flooding and the power failures are bad and historically so, it could have been worse. In Vermont, which Irene hit after being downgraded to a tropical storm, whole towns have been cut off by the kind of flooding no one in Vermont would have ever expected. After all, no one expected the only landlocked state in New England to be affected by a tropical storm.

New weather patterns - possibly caused by climate change - are becoming the new normal. Irene was the first hurricane to make landfall in New Jersey since 1903, when the Wright Brothers were busy inventing the canceled flight. We might not have to wait another 108 years for that to happen again. Thanks to a new storm forming in the Atlantic as a I type (more on that later) it could happen again as early as next week!

Outages By the Dozen

Can you think of anything worse than a blackout - or a power failure, as it is now semi-euphemistically called? Two power failures, of course. But how about twelve power failures?

My mother and I have had the electricity go out in our house twelve times - sometimes for a few minutes, other times for a few hours - since that start of the year. I've repeatedly had to call our electric company to report these outages, and because all but one of our telephones is electrically operated and the one phone that isn't - an old Western Electric wall phone in the basement - has rotary dialing, I have to call with my cell phone. I seemingly use more of my airtime calling the electric company than anyone else.

The first outage occurred on February 25 at around 7 PM during a snowstorm. We'd had power failures before, but this was the first time it ever went off in a snowstorm. Our electricity had made it through the Blizzard of '96, but we weren't so lucky this time. But power was restored in just under three hours.

The next four outages came during the nor'easter of March 13 and 14. Number two occurred at 4:30 PM on March 13 for a second, and number three occurred at 10 PM that night and lasted five minutes. But a surge of electricity that brightened my room twenty minutes later signaled the start of another power failure - number four for the year. (It was during this part of the nor'easter that a tree fell on our garage roof.) I went to bed eventually, leaving the lamp turned on.

The power came back on at 3:15 AM, March 14 . . . then went off again two seconds later. That's five times for the year. The power was restored at around 5:30 AM, but the cable service went out.

All of those blackouts were understandable, given the inclement weather. But here's where it gets ridiculous.

By 6 PM, March 15, the cable connection had gone out twice and stayed off for an eternity in both cases, but service had been restored by 5:40 PM. (I alluded to this earlier on this blog.) The worst of the storm was over. In fact, it was only raining moderately by now. But the power went off again at about 6:10 PM - outage number six - and stayed off for over an hour an half. I thought that was definitely it for while.

Outage number seven occurred on March 28 at about 10:35 PM during a heavy rainfall. I was in the middle of preparing for a temporary job I'd just been hired for. Power was restored fifteen minutes later.

Outage number eight occurred on April 16 at 8:30 PM when I was at the computer - the only time it went off this year while I was on the PC. (I don't remember what the weather was like.) I had just published a blog post and was trying to provide a link to it on Facebook when the computer suddenly had trouble connecting to anything. The connection struggled, and finally the whole house went black. I went downstairs to get a flashlight and call the electric company, and by the time I got my cell phone out five minutes later, the power was back on. Good thing I published my post just before the outage; I might have lost it.

And then I would have lost it, if you get my drift.

Outage number nine was at 4 PM on April 26, a rainy day, while I was lying down in my room with no lights on; I wasn't feeling well. I only realized the power went off when I turned over and saw that the face on my digital clock was blank. That lasted two minutes, but outage number ten occurred at 5:25 that evening while my mother and I were getting dinner ready. That lasted about ten minutes.

Outage number eleven occurred at 1:30 AM, May 3. It was an abnormally hot night punctuated by thunderstorms, I couldn't sleep, and my fan was going. When the fan went off suddenly, I realized what had happened and felt like crying. But the power returned in five minutes.

Ironically, I slept through outage number twelve. I got up at 7 AM on May 8 to go to the bathroom, and went back to bed and fell asleep. When I woke up a short time later, I saw my clock flashing. I turned on my TV set, which always resets itself to Channel 2 (you have to keep it on Channel 4 to get cable service) after a power failure, just to make sure there was nothing wrong with my clock. Sure enough, the TV was set to Channel 2. The weather report for May 8 called for rain and wind, but none of this had even started before 10 AM.

The windy weekend we just had in New Jersey caused the lights in our house to flicker once, but surprisingly, the power stayed on after the Saturday morning outage was over. Not that I wasn't worried, though. In fact, on Saturday night, as I was watching a movie on TV, I kept wondering if I was going to get to see the end of it. But even without the threat of inclement weather, it seems that the slightest wind or rainfall can trigger a power failure on my block, and I can't understand why our electric company can't make the power more reliable. Sometimes the power goes off on a calm, sunny day. We haven't been able to go through a whole month without a blackout since February, and more recently, we haven't even made it through a whole week without one.

One thing's for sure - I'm getting sick and tired of resetting all the electric clocks in the house all the time.

A Tough Month

I'm glad March is almost over. It's been a tough month for me. Sure, I've had tougher months in the past - especially the most recent past - but this month was tough enough.

At the beginning of the month, a blood vessel behind my right eye broke and gave me a really bloodshot spot. The eye doctor told me it was normal, and it could have happened to anyone at any time.

A few days after that the nor'easter that hit New Jersey on the weekend of March 12 and 13 caused my mother and me to go through two power failures - three if you count the first as two separate ones, as the electricity came on for three seconds in between (at three in the morning!) - and two cable outages that took out our telephone service, our television service, and our Internet connection. (No phone, no tube, no Net - I ain't got no cigarettes! :-D)

In that same storm, a tree from our neighbor's yard fell on our garage roof. He had to wait eighteen days to clear things with his insurance company before he finally had it removed today.

My mother and I have both been tired. I was so tired, I went for a walk today and I could have fallen asleep standing up.

Also, I've had to deal with a lot of personal hassles that have slowed me down - including a $28 parking ticket. I also have a temporary job - never mind what that job is, I'll tell you later - with an unpredictable schedule.

Ain't that tough enough?

Today was a halfway decent day, so March is going out like a lamb. I'm sure April will be better. April come she will. :-) This period right now - the transition from March to April - is one of my favorite times of the year because spring is just beginning and Easter arrives sooner or later, depending on the lunar cycle.

And so the first three months of 2010 are over. That's the end of the first quarter! :-D

Please note that I managed to make references to three pop songs in this post. :-)