About 10 AM yesterday our power went off. The ice from the storm had accumulated all over everything and our southern pine trees just couldn’t take it any more. They started losing limbs like lepers and when the limbs crashed to the ground they brought down power lines with them. So last night we went to bed at 8 PM (believe me we struggled mightily to stay up that long with no electronic entertainment to occupy us) in a house with an inside temperature of 55 degrees. This morning the when we drove to work the devastation of trees was amazing, branches were just piled around the bases of trees. Good thing traffic was light because I had to drive on every which side of the road to avoid low hanging branches and the Miata is pretty low to begin with. And trust me on this, we were very nervous about more branches falling on us as we drove under the trees, especially with nothing but fabric for a roof.
On the one street right outside our subdivision there were no less than 3 sections of power lines down. I figured it was going to be a week before we had power again, judging by the destruction I could see. Driving around town tonight after dark it was weird to see that one block would be lit up and the next would be dark as pitch. As we came from the well lit up south side into the middle of the town, the change to near total darkness was eerie. After running an errand on the north side of town we came back to find our neighborhood lit up! Woohoo. Sometime about 2 hours ago our power was restored. So tonight, Mr. SCE&G Lineman, I love you. When I turned the heater on, the thermostat showed that it was 50 degrees inside and tonight it is getting down to 24, so it probably would have been middle 40s inside in the morning.