Thread: Storms in the U.S.

Just seen the news of the storms in the U.S. on BBC TV. Best wishes to all our friends on the other side of the pond, I hope everyone's O.K. Regards Tyrone.

Yes, I will go twos up on that one

I talked to my brother who lives in D.C. (he came out fine) and he said that it is 100 degrees with almost 100 percent humidity, not a lot of fun. There were a lot of beautiful older trees down, really low water pressure, and all of the bars and coffee shops that were open were totally packed.

We are all OK here. 70 - 80 MPH winds but only 1" of rain. Here and gone in about 1 hour. I lost a few shingles off the roof and a 7" or so diameter limb off one of the 30" - 40" diameter maple trees on my property. An old 3 story brick building in downtown marysville had the west wall blown in and the roof collapsed on it. Other buildings had their windows blown in. Pretty big storm all in all

It wasn't fun in WV Friday when my wife and I went thru it. I rarely ever have to put the wipers on high on my Freightliner, but they stayed that way for 30 miles at 30-35mph when traffic allowed it. Trees and branches all over the road. When I got to the bridge to Ohio(US-33) it was out. I continued north on 68 thru town, there was a pontoon boat from the marina upside down in the ditch all the way up at the highway. I continued on (2 lane)68 to the bridge on US-50. In that 20 miles I had to leave my lane at least 2 dozen times to go around trees and large limbs.

When I got to Ohio the power was out everywhere. I drove all the way to Columbus and only 2 gas stations had power(no-one else). Even the pharmaceutical company I delivered to in Columbus was on generator power.

It brought to mind the saying, "there's no such thing as an athiest in a fox hole." I know I said a few peoples share of prayers thru that.

It looks as though the power companies will use federal money for repairs to protect their profit margins and bonus money, while the real people that will be hurt by the outage get to restock their freezers and fridges out of pocket.

All's well at the motel. Thanks for your concern, I hope it doesn't skip the lake and come your way.

Ben

Have a son and daughter-in-law and grandson in Falls Church, VA--near DC and they lost power on Friday night and do not expect to have it back on until Tuesday or Wednesday. Eighty mile per hour winds and lots of damage in the neighborhood. I am thankful they have a basement that is somewhat comfortable. I told him to take lots of pictures so he could show them to their son. They can talk of the summer they camped out near Washington, DC.

California is often the focus of earthquakes, mud slides, and forest fires. For once, at least along the northern coast, we've had great weather while the rest of the US bakes -- and now the storms. The disruption here? We lost a couple minutes of the Euro 2012 soccer final broadcast, as signals failed to navigate the Eastern US. That's actually pretty rare.

Do hope everyone is OK. A loss anywhere is a loss for all of us.

Worst thing about storms for me (Northern New Jersey) is the power outages. Power goes out and there is no air conditioning and no (horror of horrors) internet. Wish we had been smart, like most of Europe was back in the 1930s, and buried most of our power lines underground.

-DU-

I got en email from Bill Hacker a couple days ago. He said there was some very bad storms that came through the D.C. area near where he lives and it knocked out power and the 3G/4G service near him. He was at a McDonalds several miles from home using there free wifi to get his online stuff done.

Lots of trees down in central Ohio, and many thousands still without power for the next day or two. Lack of traffic lights will make Monday's commute interesting... if your workplace actually has power.

Chip

Something like 70,000 people without power around here. My house was out for 49 hours and got pretty hot. Thursday we tied our record high temperature at 106 deg. F, but it cooled off to the mid-90's since then. I fired up the gen set Saturday morning to run the freezer and fridge and a fan. A repair crew from KY fixed the power to our house this afternoon. My wife and I are about back to normal now. We had to drive 17 miles Friday night to find a restaurant that was not packed, and saw many downed trees.

Larry

We had a tornado reported heading right towards us last night. I spent much time on the porch listening for the sound. Lightning was spectacular. It stayed about a mile away,though. We had put the pets in the basement,and were ready to go ourselves if I heard the tornado coming. Fortunately,though the funnel had been reported ON THE GROUND a short time before,it apparently went away. We've had some bad thunder storms lately,and all the coming week they are forecast. I worry because we have huge pine trees close to our house. I've had quite a few cut down,some 32" in dia. at the base. They are really dangerous when they get that big.

Originally Posted by David Utidjian

Worst thing about storms for me (Northern New Jersey) is the power outages. Power goes out and there is no air conditioning and no (horror of horrors) internet. Wish we had been smart, like most of Europe was back in the 1930s, and buried most of our power lines underground.

-DU-

Most of Northern Virginia DOES have the power lines underground. But the transmission lines and transformer pens for HV backbone are not.

After 'many' self-inflicted fibre cuts, I had recently parted with Verizon FiOS in favor of Clear Spot 3G/4G wireless. Sadly, they lost commercial power to 3 or more towers, so I've had to make a 12+ mile round-trip to find coverage. The good news is that their 'Voyager' transceiver/WiFi router is smaller than a tin of Altoids, so I could do so - despite dents on the car from falling limbs.

My big healthy Oak trees just shrugged it off, as did my pear and apple trees with hardly a broken twig. An Elm, OTOH was shredded as if a massive rotary lawnmower had descended atop it - burying my neighbor's equipment trailer, Ford diesel pickup, and ... trashing his wife's newish Toyota SUV to the tune of what looks to be 3 or 4 thousand in damages.

We actually had far less damage in my immediate area when the last big hurricane went through Northern Virginia.

Bill

We're in MD near upper NW DC. Widespread power outage, T mobile cell is sketchy. As of Saturday AM we're on a 5kW gas generator - the window unit AC we had for backup at our old place won't work on the casement or slider windows, so we picked up a 9k btu room AC w/ a window-snorkle vent. FIOS interwebz are powered up so we've got WiFi + TV. Fridge/coffee maker is covering hot coffee and cold beer.

I don't have enough power to run the RPC or TIG though, so I lost a whole weekend of work on the race car which I've been planning for a month.

These are first world problems though.

These storms seem to have been very intense but pretty localized. The doppler radar at the time showed many small cells
with the real dark red centers. Always bad. They had one isolated one of those that moved on top of an upstate NY town
a few years ago and just sat there, for a day or two. The town basically washed away. Houses, roads, bridges, infrastructure.

During this recent event westchester county got *nothing*. But then there were folks here who lost power for
two weeks during last years halloween event. Not a pretty picture.

Best of luck folks, let the utility crew gods shine on you fully.

Lost some nice Oak's and other trees... Of course it had to hit the horse shoe pit stake, car, and trailer too. Well, on the flip side I'll have some nice firewood for the fireplace next year (gotta let it season).

It is clear and sunny at my home in Wayne, NJ right now, but.... There is a crew on what used to be my front lawn that has just dug out all the shrubs in preparation to pulling an old stump. The stump belongs to what used to be a very tall pine tree. That pine tree sat almost directly over the natural gas line that runs in to the house. ALL my utilities run under the front yard and, as yet (fingers crossed), they haven't hit any of them. Which is also a bit curious since not a single utility has been marked out with flags or spray paint.
I say it is a bit curious since, at work, they have been digging up a parking lot and ALL of the utilities were clearly marked on the asphalt with spray paint. The markings are dead accurate.... I know this because the digging crew managed to hit every.single.one of those utilities with their equipment.

Sometimes it doesn't take a storm to disrupt things when humans are fully capable of doing it themselves.

-DU-

I was out at the back of my property this morning and discovered a willow tree down......in the pond of course!

I haven't had power since Friday but I have a cold refrigerator, the internet and some fans. Hardest part was getting generator fuel for the first day or so. I picked up all the large stuff in my yard and my neighbors yard but I still have some busted limbs hanging in my largest maple. I spend all of Saturday cutting limbs for friends once I got there at anyway. Lots of detours due to poles down on the roads. Some of those limbs I cut were over 16" in diameter because I couldn't cut them in one cut with my chainsaw. Good news though I did see the first repair trucks today from AEP Arkansas. Of course they could be here days...

Edit: Power was back up within an hour of my post. Very happy to be able to take a hot shower.

It hit pretty hard in my area. No power,phone or internet since and still waiting for anything.
The earliest I can expect power is this Sunday.

Doesn't matter though been out working late to keep thing going at work.