Winter (Autumn) Storm Alfred

[kazeno_taka]

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

Comments

[merimask]

It's funny how terrible 50 degrees feels over a prolonged period of time. You think "no big deal...it's like a spring day. Fifty is balmy compared to 25 or 30. Just throw on an extra sweater". But hours and hours of it just saps your will to do anything. After a week of it, I was just sitting in my car, driving around to get warm.

It took almost two weeks to get everyone's lines back up, here, when that storm happened to us 5 years ago. We had trucks come in from all over to help. There wasn't a single battery or generator left in any store anywhere for 50 miles.

This sucks for you guys because you just had to deal with Irene (I saw how bad that was...I dropped Char off at college and saw the roads washed away and the flood damage). This is the new reality. I know there are people who say climate change is a myth, but they must just not be paying attention. We had similar weather all last winter too; the East got pasted again and again by big freak storms.

The major NE metro corridor is going to need to beef up their snow removal and emergency fleet. Here in Buffalo, we're prepared with snow removal equipment and salt and we can clear the roads as these snowfalls happen (because we're used to rough winters). We are burying all our cable and power lines so that snow & ice & broken trees can't affect them. It's expensive, but it's the only answer. The major cities; NYC, Boston, Washington...even Baltimore, are all going to have to start doing the same thing, and soon.

[kazeno_taka]

Yeah, if you asked me a week ago if I could survive living in a 50-degree house, I'd say "heck yeah! I wear just a hoodie when I'm outside and it's 50 degrees." But it's so different when you're just sitting there. When you move, your body produces heat and you feel comfortable. But when you're sitting inside, and everything around you is cold, it just soaks into your bones.

Regarding climate change - it absolutely is real. And it drives me crazy when people look at snowstorms and go, "SEE. GLOBAL WARMING ISN'T REAL BECAUSE IT SNOWED." But these people aren't seeing beyond their own noses - it's not just stuff getting warmer, it's extremes. It's super hot summers and crazy winters.

And my father also thinks we need to bury our lines and cables. Aside from aesthetics, it's a great idea for weather problems as well. This isn't 1890 anymore where we don't have the technology to safely put them underground. We CAN do it, it will just be expensive. But in the long run, it will be a lot less expensive to put them underground once than constantly be repairing and replacing them, and the enormous amounts of money that goes into having a house without power for weeks. Spoiled food, generator costs, batteries for everything, not to mention the damage caused by frozen pipes. A cold house is a costly house.