It turns out that we are the lucky ones; we only lost power for 3 hours on Friday. Some friends that live in Henniker, and whom we visited on Friday night, still have no power (yes, we visited them while they had no power and used flashlights/candles to see). They have a woodstove, so can keep the house warn. But, like 33% of the households in this state, they are on a well for water. No electricity, no water pump, no water. They came over last night and she took a shower before settling down to visit with HandH, Jim and Karen (we had a houseful last night). Then they filled a bunch of water bottles to take home.
We also realized that the other end of our street has no power. The other end starts past the trailer that is the next house down, and on the opposite side of the street from us (after that, the power comes in from the other direction). Usually we can see porch lights and such at night, but that side is dark. The first clue was that WS and Jimmy (who was here all of yesterday) said that they thought they heard a generator. The hills and trees do funny things to sound, so you can never be sure from where it is coming. WS thought it was coming from a large farm at the top of the hill down the street (I know that sounds weird, but "up" the street is taking a left out the driveway and "down" the street is taking a right out the driveway). That house is approximately 1/2 way between us and the end of our road.
As I came home from getting pizza for the crowd of people we were hosting, I looked up the ridge and determined that the generator is most likely from an older, and smaller, farm where maple syrup is made. It is about 7/8 of the way between us and the end of the road. They had some lights going, but the rest of the ridge is dark, which means that Clement Hill doesn't have power either. We also know that Bear Hill road in Hilsboro is still closed (we normally take that road to Henniker when we see the aforementioned friends, but it was closed on Friday night too).
PSH crews are working around the clock to restore power. Tree cutting services are also out in force; we saw a convoy of tree cutters when we were in town yesterday morning, and I witnessed a convoy of electrical workers when I went to get pizza last night. The temps yesterday were in the high teens and at this time it is 4 degrees - but at least the winds finally calmed down late last night.
Hopefully people have found a warm place to stay, or have woodstoves to stave off the cold!
Power outages make one think what an electric car owner does when s/he can't plug the battery into the wall for re-charging! It's well that people are good about playing with others. You and WS do great! Fortunately, the wind wasn't strong enough to give anyone in this area a power problem. Hunky Husband made a big announcement, yesterday, at about 1:00 PM, that we were finally up to a wind chill of zero (that's when the temperature finally got up to 20 degrees--from a low of 5). We are nearly up to 20 degrees already this morning.
Posted by: Cop Car | February 19, 2006 at 10:23 AM
Having lights, water, heat and food, will almost always ensure you have company over. Not a bad way to have a party. Hope they get theirs back soon enough to keep the pipes from falling prey to the cold.
Posted by: Wichi Dude | February 19, 2006 at 02:13 PM
glad to hear youre ok that sounds quite scary.
Posted by: Bod | February 19, 2006 at 05:24 PM
WD - Theri pipes won't freeze unless they run thu about 5 cords of wood in their woodstove before the power comes on.
Bod - scary? No, Inconvenient - yes. It's something that is expected to happen out here in the country. We have been thru 4 days of power outage in the middle of winter before. Then we were the ones asking friends for the use of their shower. We gathered water from a yar-round spring for drinking and used melted snow for flushing the toilets. At that time we didn't even have a wood stove so the gas cook stove had to keep the upstairs warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing.
CC - I had to laugh when electric cars came out. Power outages would mean no charging, but the biggest laugh is that I couldn't even get to work on a full charge, much less back home!
Posted by: bogie | February 20, 2006 at 07:07 AM
Yes, Bogie, electric cars are meant for people like me who just run around in a small area and rarely lose power for more than 3-4 hours. (I think these issues are what prompted the development of the hybrid.) If I weren't so intimidated by all of the 21 gears on my bicycle (who knew that one couldn't even buy a 3-speed bike, much less a single-speed?--and this was in the late 1980s that I bought our bikes), I could do my errands by bike most of the time. On the power loss situation: it isn't always the folks out in the country who lose power. I remember when my parents in Kansas City MO (again, this was in the late 1980s) lost power for about 10 days in the dead of a cold winter. A couple of the neighbors had generators, so Dad and some of the men rotated its use throughout the neighborhood to keep the refrigerators and freezers cold. Had most of the freezers not been in basements, and all of the men over 70 years of age, it would have been easier to just move the freezers into the back yards--lol!
Posted by: Cop Car | February 20, 2006 at 07:46 AM