Ice Storm Cripples Parts of Northeast

[htuttle]

Source: NYT

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A crippling ice storm made a mess from Maine to Pennsylvania on Friday, leaving 1.25 million homes and businesses in seven states without power as it forced schools to close and toppled ice-laden trees and power lines onto slippery roads.

Most of the power failures occurred in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine and New York, and it was expected to take several days to completely restore electricity.

(snip)

For New Hampshire, the power failures dwarfed those during the ice storm in 1998, when some residents were in the dark for more than a week.

Nearly two dozen shelters were set up across southern New Hampshire, and the authorities were working to get generators to several nursing homes. About 20 people, mostly elderly, had settled in at a shelter at Portsmouth High School by early afternoon, though officials expected more families with young children by evening. "The big worry is really about seniors when temperatures drop in a few hours," Gov. John Lynch of New Hampshire said Friday afternoon.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/us/12cnd-storm.html?ref=us

---

I'm in Wisconsin tonight, and if we didn't have power, we'd have to think pretty fast to avoid freezing to death. Good luck to those shivering in the dark right now...

[Muttocracy]

1. I spoke to some colleagues in Maine on the phone today

One could only call on his cell phone because land lines were out. He was stuck at home until the afternoon. I'm really glad my part of NY just got a whole lot of fluffy snow.

[Davis_X_Machina]

2. Nowhere near as bad as '98 here....

...halfway between Portland and Lewiston. Lost power from 7 AM to 4 PM -- as opposed to eleven days back then. Not as much deadwood left to come down onto wires after a couple northeasters and a near-miss from a hurricane this year.

[StudsT]

9. much worse in terms of scope of impact - Northeast ice storm leaves 1.25M without power

"Utilities reported more than 400,000 homes and businesses without power in New Hampshire, including 320,000 served by the state's largest utility, Public Service Company of New Hampshire. By contrast, the 1998 storm left 55,000 Public Service customers without power."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081212/ap_on_re_us/ice_storm

well, for NH anyways... wishing you all the best up there!

t

[Tesha]

20. We have no power and no near-term prospects of restoration.

Here at the top of Tesha's Hill, we have no power and it's likely to be quite a
while before it's back on because the destruction of power lines is massive
and widespread; we're down because a tree two blocks away wiped out the
feeder to our several-block area but quite near our house, two big white
pines wiped out the three-phase feeder to the entire neighboring town.
That feeder will probably get attention a lot sooner than we do, and
rightly so.

Several of the neighbors on our circle are using enormous extension cords
to share one neighbor's fairly powerful permanently-installed backup
generator; we contributed a 100 foot, 12-gauge all-weather power cord
to that effort but are not otherwise participating. Instead, we're running
off that Dodge Grand Caravan that I so often kvetch about here. The Caravan
makes 12 volts and a pair of inverters turn that into 120 volts. By carefully
budgeting what gets connected when, we're staying warm, keeping most of
our food cold, keeping our various battery lamps recharged, and can
actually power up our internet connections and laptops.

(And our internet connections are up because 1) Comcast parked a little
Honda generator near each of their cable TV distribution amps and later,
2) FairPoint communications (no longer Verizon) parked a panel truck
with a generator near the big concentrator that serves about 1000 homes
in our area.)

It's okay right now and the weather supposed to get warmer over the
next few days, but if it drags on well into next week, it will doubtless
get pretty old pretty fast. ;)

Tesha

[StudsT]

24. I am very glad to hear you are doing OK - please keep us posted

thanks for the local report, I always like to hear how real folks are coping, and that is a great idea with the dodge :toast:

We just got word that they expect to have our power restored tomorrow :fingerscrossed:

StudsT

edit to add: I'm in the lakes region - beautiful country but my wife wants to move to hawaii =)

[Muttocracy]

26. Welcome to DU by the way. Stay safe and warm. nt

[Tesha]

29. Power has now made it back to within two blocks of us...

but there's no word on when they'll put back the magic
wire that will let them close the switch that will restore
that last two-block run; there are still bigger outages
all around us to work on.

Generally, our "jury rig" continued to hold up, though,
and today the weather's much warmer, so we're doing
okay. Check with us again on Wednesday or Thursday,
though ;-) .

Tesha

[Tesha]

30. They did it!

About an hour ago, PSNH closed the switch and energized the wire.
About a half hour later, we had all the jury rigs and kludges removed
and our main breaker closed again.

And just in time -- the Caravan was losing one of its two electric
radiator cooling fans!

Tesha

[mainegreen]

25. We got clobbered pretty hard in Portland.

Deering Oaks is a mess.

A lot of trees down or missing limbs.


Family in South Paris and Stoneham just got snow. An narrow band of suck. Outside, things were ok.

[Cha]

23. We got white

fluffy snow, too, but it's in the 20s today. NOthing we can't handle, thankfully.

My daughter in Portland Ore says the worst thing they get is the Ice Storms and the whole city shutsdown.

[catnhatnh]

3. Yep...it did....

Funny ass storm too...tuesday morning 7 degrees. wednesday morning 47 degrees...the day topped out at 56...Soooo, yesterday all day the temp dropped and all last night was a rain/frozen rain mix. This morning most of my hometown-Rochester NH, population 25K was without power-my place is a doublewide in a coop park with underground power-we never lost it.

So anyhow the largest utility says there are nearly 200K people without power currently which is about 20% of the state.28 degrees now but this afternoon the sun was shining and we had ice-falls from all the trees.

My mom had oxygen delivered by the local EMTs in Alton about 3 this morning. Her POC was losing battery power. This afternoon there was still no power in her part of Alton so she'll stay with my brother in Wolfboro tonight.

It probably don't mean a damn thing,but after the tornado up here about September,I think the weathers getting hinky.

Edited to add: My brother reminded me it was late July, not early September as I remembered...but the fact is that unlike Missouri, New Hampshire tornado season is kinda like "never"....

[amerikat]

4. We got whacked pretty good here in Washington County, NY

Lots of power outages. Many trees down to the ground. Have a few
limbs to clean up in my yard. I have only lived here a few years
and I can say that I have seen worse. I only lost power in a blink out.
The power came right back on. I have a generator if things get bad for
a few days.

Friends in Vermont did better.....friends in NH did worse. With all the
mountains up here the weather can be very local.

Last night it rained and the temp was around 28 degrees, so what fell froze on contact.
then it snowed a couple of inches toward morning. Not a big deal but the first of the season
so it takes on a bigger stance. I'm sure we will get worse storms before winter
is over.

Well that is the report from my neck of the woods. Love it here even with the
bad weather.

[defendandprotect]

5. Do many in your area have generators ...???

I always question the wisdom of the monster grid systems ...

Let Enron do what it did, for one ---

[amerikat]

16. few generators, near as I can tell.

I bought one when I bought the house. We had a three day outage a couple of years ago.
That convinced me to get a generator for backup power.

[cali]

15. In Vermont there were no problems that I know of

we really got lucky.

[Nite Owl]

6. We've been down here since last night

My street is closed and for some reason I'm one of the very few who has power. I have a house load of people, dogs and birds! It was all ice. Last night was like a war zone in the woods, trees were falling all night and sirens going off. We lost at least a dozen trees, one fell over my son's car but in such a way that it didn't even scratch it! Saratoga county is a mess! Albany got very little. I'm using the cell phone to get a connection for a little bit.

Say a prayer or good thoughts that the power holds out for us!

[Alamuti Lotus]

7. and the Pacific NW gets it next week

Major storm blowing in over the weekend, a few days of subfreezing next week. Yah, I know it's nothing compared to what Noo Yawkers will get every day for the next 4 months, but it's a big deal here. Major deal. Like -- "the only thing in the fucking world, BE AFRAID! DON'T GO OUTSIDE! THERE'S MONSTERS" kind of a big deal.

[StudsT]

8. I had to check my family into a hotel for the weekend - fortunately we were able to

as rooms are hard to come by... and the police in my town told me we might be without power for 4 more days - yikes - with temps going down to 5 tonight and with mom going through her 2nd bout with chemo this year, my wife and I knew we had to get her and the kids someplace warm.

my heart goes out to all those going through this, may your family and friends find a safe and warm place for the duration.

Studs

[eggplant]

10. We're on hour 27 on our generator

Man am I glad we bought that thing. We're here in Columbia County, NY, and lost power around 10:30pm last night, kicking over to our LP generator. Lots of trees and wires down everywhere. NYSEG reports 32k homes in our power district are without power. We have an estimated uptime of 3pm TUESDAY. Ugh. I'll be calling the gas company tomorrow to get an emergency delivery, just in case.

But aside from a 3-4 hour period this evening where we lost phone and dsl, we've been just fine. Water, power, heat, food, internet, sat tv. The wife has been making jam like a fiend (100 jars today). Hey, when you are trapped indoors with the kids, there's precious little to do...

I wish all of my extended neighbors warmth and safety through this utterly crappy time.

[Tuttle]

19. Interesting: I grew up in Columbia County...

and I checked this thread to see if there were any mentions of my stomping grounds (Chatham, Canaan, Queechy Lake area).

Now I live in Connecticut where we had tons of rain but the temperature stayed in the mid thirties: quite a bit of flooding but no power outages.

Tut-tut

[Ghost Dog]

11. Interesting weather. Worth thinking about diversifying/localising the grid

(since we seem to have decided that "the future will be all-electric".

Could be heading this way next. Here's what it looks like from here (my place is on the islands bottom-center):

[elleng]

12. ? Island?

Good Luck!

[Ghost Dog]

18. ¿Island good luck?

I'm putting even more extra (human) energy into social solidarity... mutual aid...

... here, on the island (in the archipielago).

Look after yourselves now (and please don't just bomb others), you hear?

:hi:

[pipoman]

14. The problem as I see it is above ground electrical

infrastructure. Poles snap, overhead lines bust and repairs take weeks to complete. Two years ago we were without electricity for a week because of ice. FEMA made grants available to local power companies to replace poles and lines but not bury the lines. Seems like asking for more of the same to me.

[Ghost Dog]

17. Indeed- So, is anyone talking about

beginning to build an all-new (intelligent) DC long-distance, yet diversified, grid, over there yet?

[Tesha]

21. The problem with storms like this isn't transmission, it's local distribution.

As someone else said above, we have a lot of ancient-technology
above-ground distribution here in the Northeast and every winter,
like clockwork, a good portion of that gets destroyed/disabled by
falling trees. Yet because it's so expensive to "underground" ex-
isting utilities, no one is willing to talk about making the big
switchover to underground distribution. New neighborhoods
are built that way, but they just tap onto the existing above-
ground three-phase feeders so it doesn't do them all that
much good in terms of overall system reliability.

Tesha

[defendandprotect]

28. Right -- but monopoly still hurts everyone ---

[defendandprotect]

27. Agree on the monopoly grid -- good for monopoly -- but everyone goes down ...

[pipoman]

13. Few natural disasters suck worse than an ice storm...been there, done that...good luck

[Eurobabe]

22. My dad lives in SW New Hampshire

He just sent me pictures, this was alot worse than the ice storm of 1999. Luckily he never lost power, but areas east and north of them got glazed over heavily. The trees are decimated.