Winter Wonderland? (yard, pictures, market)

[woolwiTch]

Do I win the prize for longest time without power? It finally went back on at 2pm this afternoon. Our road is less than half a mile from Route 1 and there were no access problems at all, so I don't really know why it took so long. 10 houses on our road. It wasn't obvious what the problem with the power was, either. No trees down, no wires down, no limbs hanging from the wires.... I'm not complaining; just saying I literally don't know.

I'm so excited I'll be able to go to bed tonight without getting up every two hours to put more wood in the stove. And I can use my oven, flush the toilets, yippeeee! I've got some bread dough rising and it'll be hot bread for dinner.

The snow in Woolwich was only about 8 inches, but so wet and heavy I couldn't make good headway with the plow attached to the compact tractor. So I used the snowblower to clear the top 6 inches and then plowed. There is one part of the driveway that is now soooo narrow. I'll have to get out there and see if I can push the snow back before it snows again.

[msina]

I'm so glad you finally got your power back.

[reloop]

Originally Posted by woolwiTch

Do I win the prize for longest time without power?

You should definitely win an all expense paid trip to Home Depot to pick up a fabulous new generator!

We didn't have one until we bought our hunting camp (it would have been great during the ice storm of '98). It's just a puny one, but man I love it, and I don't know how the heck we ever got along without one

Well, being a Maine girl and all, I have to say ignorance was bliss while growing up (and power wasn't nearly as reliable as it is now believe it or not). During the ice storm, there was power literally 20 yards down the road. Our power was connected further up the road in the other direction, so we didn't get ours back for over 9 days I believe...maybe that's why you didn't get yours???

Glad your back up and runnin'!

[Casper1212]

Let me say this while I still live too far away for anybody to retaliate--our new house in Maine has a generator hard wired into the entire house. We don't get much snow down here, but we do get power outages in the summer. At least in winter, you can throw more wood on the fire. But if there's no way to run the AC when it's 110, well, your goose cooked. Literally. Between the power company taking their time about dispatching a crew and fixing the problem, and our being the last occupied house on the line, it takes a while sometimes to get power back on. And when the owner showed us that you only have to hit a few switches to turn on the generator, I told my husband to write the man a check.
Seriously, hope nobody had any emergencies, etc. or other serious problems due to the snow. But from what I've seen on the forum, ya'll seem to just roll with it.

[woolwiTch]

Originally Posted by reloop

You should definitely win an all expense paid trip to Home Depot to pick up a fabulous new generator!

We didn't have one until we bought our hunting camp (it would have been great during the ice storm of '98). It's just a puny one, but man I love it, and I don't know how the heck we ever got along without one

Well, being a Maine girl and all, I have to say ignorance was bliss while growing up (and power wasn't nearly as reliable as it is now believe it or not). During the ice storm, there was power literally 20 yards down the road. Our power was connected further up the road in the other direction, so we didn't get ours back for over 9 days I believe...maybe that's why you didn't get yours???

Glad your back up and runnin'!

Thanks, reloop and msina. We have had a generator on our to-do list forever, but I think this will really do it. Have to decide whether to go wild and get a standby generator for the big bucks....

Wow, horrible for you in the ice storm. I know people went for even longer, but it's got to be incredibly frustrating when the power is going so near by.

As for ours, it turned out that the problem was that the breaker blew at the end of our street. All they had to do was go up on the lift and plug it back in. I heard afterward that one of our neighbors, a builder, called CMP several times, starting on Monday, to tell them that, but it didn't make any difference. Kind of frustrating, since this happened once before. Apparently, when they lose power on the main road that ours connects to, our breaker often blows. So it would be great if they would reconnect our breaker when they fix the main road (they fixed the main road this time after power had been out for four hours), but I don't know of any way to get them to do that. Oh well. I guess if we get the generator I won't let that bother me too much.

I grew up in Maine and I'm with you; it sure was a lot worse then. Luckily for us, though, our house then was not far from the fire station and police station, so we were usually back online in short order. I do remember one horrible time, though, when the power went out and we all (parents and four kids) had the stomach flu. I wish I didn't remember.

[fxtrader]

They go in order of population. I was down for 2 weeks during the ice storm of 98, but it was because I lived at the end of a dead end road. I had a generator by the 2nd day and my parents had one of the automated one installed after the ice storm and it has kicked in several times since. Including twice this winter.

[woolwiTch]

Originally Posted by fxtrader

They go in order of population. I was down for 2 weeks during the ice storm of 98, but it was because I lived at the end of a dead end road. I had a generator by the 2nd day and my parents had one of the automated one installed after the ice storm and it has kicked in several times since. Including twice this winter.

I know they prioritize by population, but that doesn't seem to be entirely true. I have friends who got power restored days before us although their affected area was much smaller. There were 50 roads with outages in Woolwich on Wednesday night when all outages had been repaired in smaller areas like Phippsburg, Georgetown, Harpswell, and so on.

Oh well, it's over and no reason for me to harp on it at this point. Time to get out there and push some snowbanks back to make room for more snow!

[Casper1212]

Population isn't the only way they rank priority. In a power outage, emergency response (law enforcement and ambulances) gets back on first, then medical services, (hospitals and nursing homes) then communications sources, (television and radio stations) in that order. Although I think they may have switched it to medical services, then emergency responders after 911 because they now provide communities with emergency management plans that include giving officials in charge sat phones and other sources of communications that don't need power, which is the reason they used to be first on the list. If you happen to be on the same substation, etc as one of the priorities, you get lucky enough to get your power on sooner. Sometimes they will give consideration to elderly and handicapped households.

[reloop]

Originally Posted by fxtrader

They go in order of population. I was down for 2 weeks during the ice storm of 98, but it was because I lived at the end of a dead end road. I had a generator by the 2nd day and my parents had one of the automated one installed after the ice storm and it has kicked in several times since. Including twice this winter.

We were just connected on the wrong corner of the line during '98.

I can remember watching all the "pretty lights" snapping and popping on the poles down the road and thinking, "Man, this ain't good - it'll be quite a while before they can get to us." Especially when it was like that all over the state. It's best to be prepared and patient.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

We are due for another foot of "wonderland" tomorrow night into Monday.