Rain Gryphon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rain_gryphon) wrote2004-12-23 06:40 pm
rain_gryphon) wrote2004-12-23 06:40 pm
Atomic Storm of Doom
What an atrocious storm. My drive home last night, usually about 20 minutes, took an hour and a half. I thought I was stuck firmly several times on the side streets, but each time I broke it loose and kept going. Some of the places around us had two feet of snow. Here we had only about a foot, but it changed to sleet and freezing rain as the night wore on, so that on top of our foot of snow there's an ice crust about three inches thick. If you step lightly, you can walk without breaking through.
About 4am or so I was lying in bed reading, when the lights dimmed and then went out. There was an impressive series of blue flashes through the window, but they'd quit by the time I got there to see what was happening. I'm guessing either a line went down or else a transformer exploded. In any event, I didn't see anything today. According to the power company's website, failures started around 3am or so, and proceeded to get worse until morning as the ice built up. There're some 200K people in the area without power tonight, and it may not be restored for a while. Fortunately my apartment tends toward the warm side, and the temperature had only dropped to about 60F by this afternoon. Also I've got my little military fuel-pellet stove to cook on, and plenty of MREs, so I'll be okay.
This morning my car wouldn't start. It's been needing an ignition tuneup for some time, and I'd kept putting it off. I ended up breaking off a crust of ice to get the hood open, and did it right there (I already had the parts). After starting the car, and breaking away all the ice, I had a new problem: the tire ruts in the parking lot had all frozen and crusted over, so that I was faced with a surface of icy ridges that I had to back across to get my wheels in the two narrow tracks that would lead me to the street. I finally made it out by rocking, although it was a near thing. I thought at one point that I was stuck fast, which would be a humiliating thing to happen in one's own parking lot.
The beltway was somewhat better than the surface streets, but nothing to brag about. The street department here seem to be a collection of loserboys when it comes to dealing with snow. There was minimal salting and plowing. In other places that I've lived, the salt trucks are out there before it snows, getting a layer down on the road before it can stick. Here there seems to be little or no salt in use, and I saw only like three plows on my way home last night, one of which had his blade up. Wrecked cars everywhere. If this were Chicago or Cleveland they'd have the mayor's head on a pole.
About 4am or so I was lying in bed reading, when the lights dimmed and then went out. There was an impressive series of blue flashes through the window, but they'd quit by the time I got there to see what was happening. I'm guessing either a line went down or else a transformer exploded. In any event, I didn't see anything today. According to the power company's website, failures started around 3am or so, and proceeded to get worse until morning as the ice built up. There're some 200K people in the area without power tonight, and it may not be restored for a while. Fortunately my apartment tends toward the warm side, and the temperature had only dropped to about 60F by this afternoon. Also I've got my little military fuel-pellet stove to cook on, and plenty of MREs, so I'll be okay.
This morning my car wouldn't start. It's been needing an ignition tuneup for some time, and I'd kept putting it off. I ended up breaking off a crust of ice to get the hood open, and did it right there (I already had the parts). After starting the car, and breaking away all the ice, I had a new problem: the tire ruts in the parking lot had all frozen and crusted over, so that I was faced with a surface of icy ridges that I had to back across to get my wheels in the two narrow tracks that would lead me to the street. I finally made it out by rocking, although it was a near thing. I thought at one point that I was stuck fast, which would be a humiliating thing to happen in one's own parking lot.
The beltway was somewhat better than the surface streets, but nothing to brag about. The street department here seem to be a collection of loserboys when it comes to dealing with snow. There was minimal salting and plowing. In other places that I've lived, the salt trucks are out there before it snows, getting a layer down on the road before it can stick. Here there seems to be little or no salt in use, and I saw only like three plows on my way home last night, one of which had his blade up. Wrecked cars everywhere. If this were Chicago or Cleveland they'd have the mayor's head on a pole.
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Today reminds me of Dallas. I was there in an ice storm in 1978, and the whole city was pretty much shut down. They at least have an excuse, in that a bad winter storm is something they're going to see every 25 years or so. I'm seeing almost the same level of cluelessness and helplessness here, though, despite the fact that it snows here every winter.