Back from another big wind in the south!

[turbosat]

It is good to be back in civilization again. Monday was another day of strong winds for us, in north Ala and not sure where else-power went out about 330pm. It is hard to check the news any these days without internet or tv, I'm really disappointed with the local news coverage on radio. 5 minutes worth at the most, and 3 of that is commercials. We in north central Alabama had numerous power outages, trees down on lines , very widespread. I understand there are crews from 10 states working to get the electric service restored. Ours came back on at 1pm today, and I've been cleaning, testing electronics and appliances,etc since. I don't think we lost anything after all that time, other than contents of the refrigerator, and one huge hickory tree in the back yard (try to post a picture later of that).
Living like the Amish for a couple of days is a shocker, for those who haven't tried oil lamps and battery radios lol. Could've been much worse though. No deaths that I know of around here, just a lot of inconvenience. Strangely, it was within a few days of the 20yr anniversary of the 93 snow storm. *I was able to hear the
St Mary's/Middle Tenn college basketball game last night, barely, thanks to TSN1050-AM Toronto ! And that's really all I missed except the news coverage of this mess.

 

[phlatwound]

Glad to hear y'all pulled through T, sounds like a mess. We were out of juice for 13 days in 07 (ice storm), was still occasionally flipping light switches on till the last day thinking they would light something up.

 

[turbosat]

I'm getting to think this might be the year to switch back to gas oven and water heater! We had heat, but it wasn't really that cold this week. Heard there were some gusts recorded at 88mph from this event, and a couple of EF2 tornados touched down about 70miles north. This tree that came down would've flatten the house, had it been growing on the west side of it, instead of east in the back yard. It fell perfectly away from the house, and took another dead tree down right along with it!

 

[eurosport]

Holy crap Turbosat! Glad your OK.

 

[Tron]

Must have been that front that came through here a couple of days ago. Cooled things off, but had a good amount of wind with it.

Turbo, glad to hear you're back on the grid. Sorry about the freezer... That's a lesson I learned the hard way after Katrina. Now, whenever hurricane season starts, the freezer gets cleared of everything but foods we are constantly eating. After a week with no power, the smell is so bad you need to discard the freezer/refrigerator.

 

[Blindowl1234]

Glad you're ok too. We bought a medium size generator a few years back..enough to run fridge, tv and computer. We lost a bunch of food more than once so generator was worth it...I cut all trees down except one in front of the house too. If I could convince others around me to cut down their overgrown trees my garage would survive a big storm maybe.

 

[truckracer]

I have a 20,000 watt standby Generac.
It runs on natural gas. I installed it about a month ago. I have a 200 amp automatic transfer switch and load shed module that stages the air conditioners on and off to minor power surging.

I run two 2.5 Ton heat pumps and the rest of the house. I have gas furnaces that back up the heat pumps (no heat strips). Heat strips on most heat pumps will overload a very large generator.

 

[rv1pop]

A medium small generator (2500 to 3500 watt NON-Inverter generator) will run most emergency household items if you are careful. If you want to avoid the expense of a transfer switch, use 12 or 10 gauge extension cords. Also, note that some of the older CFLs will draw a LOT of current and will, on start up, stop an inverter --- and may drop enough generator voltage on start up to drop a refrigerator off line! (as well as your satellite equipment).
One other warning (we are off grid, but many of our friends are on grid and lose power frequently) USE battery operated smoke and CO detectors. Powered ones are now required by code in most places. The back up batteries, if so equiped, may not last, AND NOTE: without electricity you probably will not have fresh air ventilation. When your birds and cats die, you are too sick to figure out what to do....