What a night!
Violent thunderstorms went through the area last night. Apparently the worst of it was to the north and west of us, but even where I am, the thunder crashes were loud enough to scare me. Apparently, tornado sirens went off around Columbus and Hilliard, and people were advised to seek shelter in their basements. No tornado touchdowns have been reported, though. People at work are complaining of getting only 4 hours or so of sleep because they went down to their basements.
We didn’t hear sirens, and we are so far away from a town center that I’m not sure we could hear them if they went off. I’m thinking it would be wise to invest in a weather alert radio.
We didn’t lose power, but several circuit breakers were tripped because of the storm. One of those seems to be the breaker for the well pump. I got exactly half a shower this morning, I guess just the volume of water in the hot water tank. I had just soaped - I kid you not - in the MOST inconvienient place when the stream of water from the shower head dwindled to nothing. Luckily we had a stored three-gallon container of water that I used to rinse off with. rfunk went down to the cellar to investigate, and flipped a few circuit breakers. He thought the pressure gauge on the water pressure tank might be rising, but it will take time to tell for sure if the pump is operational again.
I guess we were pretty lucky not to lose power entirely. Apparently some 19,000 homes in the central Ohio area lost power. Of course, based on past experience, the farmhouse seems to lose power about 6 to 8 hours after the storm event, so it could still go out some time today.
Originally published at Duriyah's Blog. You can comment here or there.
Edit @ 3pm: rfunk informs me that the pump at the farmhouse is working. He had to replace a fuse to get the pressure tank working, but we have water pressure now!