Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Blogging in the Dark

We lost power on Saturday night as the snow was falling. I'm so thankful that we have a generator and that my husband was home. He had just returned from a long business trip. I was able to stockpile food for all of us, two and four legged. We have firewood. It's getting harder to find gas for the generator, and over 95% of our town is out of power, as is most of the state. There are no estimates of when they will be able to restore everything.

It was an instant replay of the hurricane, only with a foot of snow. There was total silence on Saturday night, broken only by loud cracks and pops and crashing noises as huge trees fell. We lost a big oak that crushed our lovely dogwood tree. A 75 year old maple, really huge, fell from our front yard across the road, splitting a telephone pole in half. Big branches from the ash tree came down on the power lines from the street to the house.

Sunday morning, as I ventured out to feed the horses at 6:30 am, I was so relieved to see that nothing had fallen near the barn. The girls are calm and mellow. I haven't let them out in the pasture yet since the snow is melting fast and there's a lot of water under it. The temperatures are supposed to warm up to almost 60 today. The phone and Internet come and go, and right now I'm so thankful that we have a way to connect with the outside world. They won't make any estimates when power will be restored, but we're thinking it might be as long as a week more of this crazy camping out lifestyle.

I'll try to get some photos up later. This certainly makes me not take forgranted the basics of living.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad you're all OK and hope things get back to normal soon - your part of the country has certainly had a difficult year!

Sand. said...

Oye. Sorry to hear that things are so crazy down there with the snow. It's amazing when you live in a place that's cold and snowy for 6 months of the year, how much you don't realize how difficult the white-stuff is on those not prepped for it. Kinda like if we ever had a hurricane here. Or an earthquake! Stay warm!

Victoria Cummings said...

Thanks Kate and Sand - Strangely, we've had an earthquake, a hurricane and now this crazy snowstorm in October all in the last couple of months here in New England. We're used to snow and cold - last winter was a doozy - but the leaves are still on the trees and the flowers were still blooming when this hit - that's why all the trees came down from the weight of the snow on the leaves. It's actually more damage than the hurricane did! Wild weird weather....

Lori Skoog said...

Talk about crazy weather. Glad you are all OK. When we have no power, we have no water (well)...which complicates things even more. Camping is not my favorite thing. Hope you get back to normal VERY soon. That 60 degrees must have melted all the snow by now.

Deejbrown said...

This was the scariest storm I have ever experienced but consider myself lucky with only minor damage to the house and just 3 days without power or heat. Glad your entire family are all well and made it through this one.

Victoria Cummings said...

As of Wednesday, we still have about 3 or 4 inches of snow because it goes down into the 20's at night. They are estimating that we will get our power back on Sunday night, so we've got 5 more days of this. At least our well pump has an electric starter so we have water with the generator but not enough power to run the hot water heater. It's like being a pioneer!

Victoria Cummings said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Wolfie said...

I couldn't believe the snow you guys got when I saw it on the news!! Wow! My sister lost power for 3 weeks during the ice storm in 1998. In fact, they were trapped in their house for a number of days. She and her husband ate lots of fondue meals and played board games by fire and candle light. She said it was great. :-) Keep warm!!!