Winter (Autumn) Storm Alfred
After 36 hours without power, I've come to appreciate just how wonderful central heating is. :x This house got COLD. In case you haven't seen the news, New England basically got blasted by a freak snowstorm on October 29th. That's right, we're having a White Halloween.
Most of the state of Connecticut had no power as of yesterday. I went driving around and EVERYTHING was closed, except for one McDonalds and a Dunkin Donuts. I tried to get close to the mall area, but every road going in was backed up about a mile, partially due to the fact that this was the only area within several towns with power and thus open restaurants/stores, and also it was the only place with operating gas stations.
As you can see, many of the trees in Connecticut still have leaves. And not just a few leaves, full, completely green leaves. A few people asked me "why did Connecticut lose so much power just from a measly foot of snow?" It's because so many of our trees still had so many leaves. Conifers such as pines are designed so they simply bend down when they get heavy with snow. Deciduous trees such as maples and oaks are shaped in an opposite way and have harder wood. They don't bend like conifers do. It's like trying to bend your elbow backwards - it will snap before it bends, and that's what happened to many many MANY branches across the state.
A view of that huge maple in our backyard from the other side. The 'broken branch' in the foreground is actually a 10-foot tall tree that's up against our house, that bent completely over from the weight of the snow.
Here's the same view 24 hours later. As you can see, once the snow melted, the maple sprung right back up, as did the 10-foot tree to the right. This 'spring up' also caused problems, since the branches didn't just gently rise back up. The snow often slid off in huge chunks, causing the branches to shoot back up, sometimes taking out additional power lines.
Another view during the storm, this time of about 1/4 of the catalpa tree that broke off against our house. There is no damage that we can see, but...
...the end of the branch fell on either our cable or telephone wire. It didn't break it, thankfully (and both phone and cable are working fine), but damn it came close.
All in all, here's what our front yard looks like after the storm. A mess of fallen branches and melting snow. There's only a couple inches left now, but the snow was extremely heavy and wet. Last night, temperatures plunged into the 20s, causing all that snowmelt to turn to ice. If we didn't get power back last night, we would have been in for a very, very cold night.
Here's a map showing the percentages of power outages as of today, 10/31. I showed where I am to give you an idea of how widespread everything is:
Most of the state is still without power, so we're very lucky to have our power back. This cleanup isn't going to be as simple as simply fixing wires and turning the power back on - I heard substations got damaged and those will have to be fixed first. While driving yesterday, I had to snake under draping wires (often there was a narrow path on one side of the road where my thankfully short car was able to pass beneath), and around huge branches in the road. My own road is 3/4 blocked off by about half a tree. I found myself accidentally driving over fallen wires (not live, thankfully) because there are just so many, and they're so hard to see with all the debris.
Most of the state of Connecticut had no power as of yesterday. I went driving around and EVERYTHING was closed, except for one McDonalds and a Dunkin Donuts. I tried to get close to the mall area, but every road going in was backed up about a mile, partially due to the fact that this was the only area within several towns with power and thus open restaurants/stores, and also it was the only place with operating gas stations.
As you can see, many of the trees in Connecticut still have leaves. And not just a few leaves, full, completely green leaves. A few people asked me "why did Connecticut lose so much power just from a measly foot of snow?" It's because so many of our trees still had so many leaves. Conifers such as pines are designed so they simply bend down when they get heavy with snow. Deciduous trees such as maples and oaks are shaped in an opposite way and have harder wood. They don't bend like conifers do. It's like trying to bend your elbow backwards - it will snap before it bends, and that's what happened to many many MANY branches across the state.
A view of that huge maple in our backyard from the other side. The 'broken branch' in the foreground is actually a 10-foot tall tree that's up against our house, that bent completely over from the weight of the snow.
Here's the same view 24 hours later. As you can see, once the snow melted, the maple sprung right back up, as did the 10-foot tree to the right. This 'spring up' also caused problems, since the branches didn't just gently rise back up. The snow often slid off in huge chunks, causing the branches to shoot back up, sometimes taking out additional power lines.
Another view during the storm, this time of about 1/4 of the catalpa tree that broke off against our house. There is no damage that we can see, but...
...the end of the branch fell on either our cable or telephone wire. It didn't break it, thankfully (and both phone and cable are working fine), but damn it came close.
All in all, here's what our front yard looks like after the storm. A mess of fallen branches and melting snow. There's only a couple inches left now, but the snow was extremely heavy and wet. Last night, temperatures plunged into the 20s, causing all that snowmelt to turn to ice. If we didn't get power back last night, we would have been in for a very, very cold night.
Here's a map showing the percentages of power outages as of today, 10/31. I showed where I am to give you an idea of how widespread everything is:
Most of the state is still without power, so we're very lucky to have our power back. This cleanup isn't going to be as simple as simply fixing wires and turning the power back on - I heard substations got damaged and those will have to be fixed first. While driving yesterday, I had to snake under draping wires (often there was a narrow path on one side of the road where my thankfully short car was able to pass beneath), and around huge branches in the road. My own road is 3/4 blocked off by about half a tree. I found myself accidentally driving over fallen wires (not live, thankfully) because there are just so many, and they're so hard to see with all the debris.