I survived the ice storm of 2022

Well, that explains a lot. The level of humor shot up on X4 the last few days.😂

I keed I keed! Glad you are okay now. Losing power in the winter doesn’t sound like much fun.

Yet you still hate Florida.

@Fedya posted:

Some None of you may have noticed I haven't posted here since Thursday.

We had some nasty crap here as well.  Freezing rain, 3 inches of sleet (which sucks to shovel) and then 6 inches of snow.  And wouldn't you know it during the storm my freaking furnace goes out. 

Check the engine oil level. Some generators/small engines have low oil sensors that won't allow the engine to start or keep running if the oil level gets too low. I learned that lesson the hard way with my Honda generator. lol

Seafoam fuel treatment in the gas every time! Store it with that expensive gas they sell at Lowes ect TRU FUEL 4 CYCLE.

Put your generator by your lawnmower and  snowblower.  Fire that damn thing up and let it run whenever you fire up one of the other two.  Nothing worse than needing it and not being able to get it to run,  and nothing guarantees it's not going to run than letting it set for years in-between uses.  At the very  least run it every spring and fall when you change the oil.

Glad to hear you and yours are okay, Fedya.

I'm old enough to have survived this ice storm.

Since it was before electricity, how did you know that the power was even out? 😀

I'm guessing none of you had to shovel coal or have 40 cords of wood handy.

Seafoam.  Greatest shit ever.

@QuietOne posted:

Glad to hear you and yours are okay, Fedya.

I'm old enough to have survived this ice storm.

In our area we had a snowstorm about 2 weeks before that also took down many power lines. It was a real wet snow that accumulated on lines. Some power lines were 4-6 inches across.  We were witout power longer during the snowstorm than the ice storm.  Of course there were a lot of new poles and wires that stood the ice better.  Now our power is all underground from the substation right to our breaker panel.  If we lose power now a whole lot of other people are out too.

I've lived in my home since '88. The power has gone out a grand total of about 5 hours. 3 of those was when a drunk took down a pole. I have a 3000 watt genny that mounts on a tractor. I've taken it to 4 shows but have never used it. I hook a barn fan to it once a year to make sure it still works.

2020 Derecho was our only extended power outage to date and that was less than 24 hours. We were lucky, people 10 miles to the north were out a week to two+ weeks and there was some pretty hot days in there.

KonKrete: We don't have a lawn mower (only a weed wacker and leaf blower) or a snowblower (the driveway is long enough to plow). 

We've gotten some of those heavy wet snows too, with probably the most memorable being the October 1987 storm which came ridiculously early in the season.  That one actually affected Albany and the other side of the Hudson River more than it affected us here in Ulster County.  I was a sophomore in HS at the time and some of the teachers were without power for days.

Power was out for about two days during TS Floyd in 1999.  I remember taking one of my parents' dogs and walking him on the back woodlot to see the extent of the damage when I saw something moving rapidly out of the corner of my eye.  It was kinda the color of a deer, but too low to the ground, and too fast to be a bear.  It took me a bit to realize it was a couple of coyotes. 

Power was also out for about two days during TS Irene in 2011, although again we were spared the worst as the storm devastated Prattsville in the northwest corner of the Catskills.  (BK, I'd still rather deal with the infrequent ice storm than the threat of hurricanes in Florida.  That and I don't have to deal with Florida Man.)

At any rate, we lost power again around noon on Monday since the ice wasn't yet melting off the trees.  Unfortunately, the utility's outage map claimed this particular outage was only affecting one customer.  Sure enough, we were the only ones without power as we've got several poles leading from the road to our house at the end of a dead-end road.  When the utility crew came out to inspect the problem, they informed us that a tree had fallen on the transformer, and as it's a customer-owned pole, removing the tree was not something they were allowed to assume the liability for, unlike the utility-owned poles.    So we had to call a tree service and get the tree removed, and then call the utility again to get the outage fixed.  Power finally came back, for good (fingers crossed) about 10:00 AM yesterday.  It's been in the 40s too yesterday and today, so all the ice has melted.

Oy.

At least some of us don't think we're going to freeze just because it gets below 50.

@Fedya posted:

...When the utility crew came out to inspect the problem, they informed us that a tree had fallen on the transformer, and as it's a customer-owned pole, removing the tree was not something they were allowed to assume the liability for, unlike the utility-owned poles.   

Wow. Glad you got your power back (eventually). Where I live, the utility owns everything right up to the house.

Above ground power lines should be banned.  

Every time some big weather event occurs it’s inevitable that lines and power will go down.  In the Upper Midwest that’s basically like every 6 months.

Thankfully our neighborhood doesn’t have that problem but a lot of other areas do.  Northern WI (aka up nort) in particular is really bad.