Winter Is For The Birds

Winter Is For The Birds

On Thursday while we waited for Joan to pack her “Go Bag” I stood at her patio door gazing out at the ice that had accumulated on the patch of trees on the other side of her backyard fence. Suddenly something large and brown landed on a limb. Unlike the other 99.9% of wildlife that surprise me when I have a camera handy, this bird stayed posed while I had time to pull the camera from my back pocket, turn it on, zoom in, focus and press the shutter. It didn’t stay long enough for a second picture though.

There was no sign of winter around here anymore today, it was a nice sunny, warm afternoon, so I washed the gray road film that accompanies any snow or ice event off the Purple Whale. I was going to do it the easy drive-through-car-wash way, but there was a really long queue at Lulu’s and because I hate waiting in line more than physical labor I returned home and broke out the bucket and sponge.

Back

We’re back and so is our power.

Every few hours or so on Thursday evening and throughout the day Friday we would dial our home phone to see if we had power. We knew that if the answering machine picked up, the power was back on, but all we ever got were rings.

After we returned to the hotel from visiting Savannah on Friday I managed to get my buddy Mark (Hi Mark) on the phone. He had just gotten his power back and was in town restocking supplies. He was at a store not too far from the Dunbarton Oaks estate so I asked him if it wasn’t too much trouble, to run by the house and see if in fact we still didn’t have power. He called back a few minutes later to say he was parked in front of the house and the light at the end of the driveway was not lit. But he did say that there was an SCE&G bucket truck right there with him and that he passed a few more such trucks as he started down our street. He also said that if he were me he’d stay where we were for another day as the area was still littered with downed trees and power lines.

I reported this to Donna and suggested we stay until Sunday morning, but she said 2 days in a hotel by the interstate were plenty and to man up because we we leaving Saturday morning, power on in Aiken or not.

When we pulled into our neighborhood this morning we knew that there was no way in hell we had power and we were right. We opened up the house and promptly opened the blinds, shades and curtains to let in the bright sun. It was actually about 5 degrees warmer outside at 55 degrees than it was inside. Spent the next 3 hours with a bow saw, a wheelbarrow and a rake cleaning up what we could from near the front of the house.

We went out for lunch and when we got home we could see a power crew just 2 doors away. Donna went down and asked about how long they would be before they got to us. They told her it would be real soon as our transformer was next in line. While they worked on our group of 4 houses, Donna and I spent about another hour and a half cleaning up the side yard.

We finished at about the same time as the light at the end of the driveway illuminated. So I went over and shook the hands of the two guys working the bucket truck and thanked them profusely. They were from Henderson, KY, about 600 miles away just to help out. Really, thanks a lot guys.

They were in the neighborhood doing the easy ones, trying to get as many folks as they could back online quickly. They would check to see how many houses were connected to a transformer and if there were no issues they would turn it on. One of the 4 houses we shared our transformer with, had had the line to their house knocked off onto the ground. That was going to a problem, but Donna told them that the owner lived in Florida and didn’t occupy the place, so they rolled up the power line and disconnected them from the transformer.

I guess it is a good thing that Donna overrode my wanting to heed Mark’s advice and stay another day down south. Because had we not been around to tell them about our across the street neighbor, the power crew might have skipped our transformer all together because of the downed line and we might have had to wait a lot longer until we got power.

39,000 Falling Tree Limbs

We went to bed last night with power, but at 1:30 in the morning I awoke to silence, the power was off again. Getting back to sleep took awhile because of the sound of falling stuff. There was the light crack and rattle of bushes covered in ice falling over and then there was the groan followed by a loud crack as tree limbs plummeted to the ground. A couple of times the tree limb’s progress to earth were interrupted by our roof with a loud thud and a rumble, rumble as they rolled off.

So far we have escaped with only minor damage considering the size of the limbs falling. In the second picture the dark line above the windows in the sided area is from where a limb hit the gutter on the way down and bent it. In the third picture on the left side is a pile of branches that landed on our wire fence between yards, crushing it in the middle. And the branch laying on the ground in front of the garbage can dragged its end down along the wall in that area and broke a bunch a pieces of siding on its fall.

By late morning we were getting cold, the temperature in the house read 57, we picked up our friend Joan who was in the same situation and slowly drove around Aiken looking for something open. There were a few places that looked open but they weren’t really, just employees inside stranded from getting to their homes from the last shift. We were a half hour early for the Golden Corral being opened, but by the time it did it would have been over run by all the folks out cruising like us. We went back to Joan’s house where she packed a bag, then to our house were we did the same and I got on US78 and headed west.

We finally got our hot lunch in Branchville, SC at a Chinese restaurant. They didn’t have electricity, but their gas burners were going and the three of us each had an egg roll and split some fried rice and chicken and broccoli. The little hole in the wall was unheated and the steam was rising off the food as we ate, but the three of us agreed it was the best Chinese food we had ever had. It really wasn’t until we hit I-95 about 20 miles later that the trees painted white with a coating of ice and sagging started to thin out.

We tried a couple of hotels at the first two exits but we were not the only one’s escaping the ice and they were already filled. The Emperor passed the 39,000 mile mark somewhere on I-95 south on the way to our final destination, a HIE in Hardeeville, SC.

Freezing Rain Begat Ice

Well, power has been off at the house 4 different times today and thanks to the hard working guys at SCE&G it has been back on 4 times. Right now we have made it to the 2 hour mark with power which is the longest all day, but nothing is certain as it has flickered a couple of times briefly.

We partially dodged a bit of a bullet when this morning’s freezing rain turned to sleet for a long period of time and thereby diminished the thickness of the ice coating, as the small sleet pellets bounced of the existing ice instead of adding to it. Looks like a SPIA Index of 3 compared to the predicted 4, but we still did get a decent coating on surfaces as seen in the photos below (all taken from the relative comfort of inside, through our new windows.)

Ice-Ageddon

Tomorrow, two weeks to the day from the snow storm that dropped an nearly an inch of snow on our Fair City, we are primed to get nearly an inch of ICE!

Snow makes driving very problematic, but that won’t be our problem with the ice. Matter of fact the roads might not even freeze over because of their ambient warmth (bridges are a different story), but that kind of ice brings downs tree limbs, whole pine trees and power lines. That means no lights or heat and, cripes, no internet…

The Reichter magnatude scale is a number to quantify the energy that is released during an earthquake, there is a Fujita scale for rating tornado intensity and hurricanes have the Saffir-Simpson for a rating based on their sustained wind speed, but did you know there is one for ice storms as well? I didn’t either, until today, and it is called the SPIA Index.

The Sperry-Piltz Ice Accumulation Index is a scale for rating ice storm intensity, based on the expected footprint of an ice storm, the expected ice accumulation as a result of a storm, and the expected damage a storm inflicts on human-built structures, especially exposed overhead utility systems such as power lines. It goes from zero, minimal up to 5, catastrophic.

A band from say Atlanta, GA to Columbia, SC along the I-20 corridor is expected to get a Big Ol’ Four or a damage and impact description of “Prolonged and widespread utility interruptions with extensive damage to main distribution feeder lines and some high voltage transmission lines/structures. Outages lasting 5 to 10 days.” So if you don’t see any blog posts from me in a while you will know that the weather guessers got it right and it is not just me taking a Blogging Avoidance Holiday.

Big Plans?

Yesterday after breakfast we were off to visit with a friend for awhile, get some lunch and do that grocery shopping thing. Donna suggested getting some cash from the ATM to pay for lunch seeing as we were driving right by our bank on the way out of town.

Insert card, type in my PIN and when the screen comes up with my choices for services I tap the screen for $20 Fast Cash. Nothing happens. I hit the touch screen again with the same results. I try again, nothing. I pull back my hand and look at my fingertip like it could possible be the cause of failure here. I try tapping on Other Services, but, you guessed it, no response. While I contemplate the location my next futile screen press, the ATM beeps and the screen changes to a question, “Do You Need More Time?”

I think to myself, “Do I really need more time to unsuccessfully poke at the screen?” I answer myself, “Nope.” So with out thinking further, I press the screen where it says NO. Doh! As you would expect, nothing happened. Fortunately there is an physical Cancel button on the PIN number keypad.

So I go inside and walk up to the one of the two tellers and say, “The ATM touch screen isn’t working.” The other teller says, “We know, a technician is on his way.” My teller asks how much do you want, to which I say, “Just twenty bucks.” While my teller is filling out a withdrawal slip, the other teller asks, “Got big plans for the weekend?” I look at her, smile and say, “What do you think? I only asked for $20 bucks.”

Reason #127 Why I Shouldn’t Be Sent On Errands Alone

Because we hadn’t done our weekly grocery shopping yet the cupboard was nearly bare, so this morning I was sent out for breakfast. Donna wanted an order of Biscuit ‘N’ Gravy from Hardee’s and I volunteered to make the run as long as I could stop at DD too and get my morning Cup O’ Joe too. She said fine, but don’t pay the buck eighty nine for a Hot Chocolate for her as she could make her own at home.

Hardee’s was the first stop where I picked up Donna’s breakfast. Normally I get a Sausage and Egg Biscuit here, but I decided to forgo that and get a muffin at Dunkin Donuts instead. At the DD drive up I ordered and when I got to the window I handed the clerk my DD Card and she handed me my muffin. She rang up my bill then handed back the receipt and my card. It wasn’t until I was driving around the back of the building that I realized I was missing my coffee. I was so keyed in on the fact that I was getting a muffin that I drove off too soon.

So I parked the Purple Whale and sheepishly walked inside the store to pick up my Medium Coffee with Cream & Sugar.

In case you are wondering, this is Reason #1