Rough Night

Kind of gloomy here. Haven't had electricity since last night and it does not look like we will get it anytime soon either. Last night an ice storm blew through and we got an inch of ice. Trees are down all over and they say 215,000 people are without power so it may be Monday before the lights come back on. That is no surprise. The last time this happened (1998) we went 13 days without power. We are literally one of the last houses on the line so we will be the last to get power.

Patty and the baby left for her mothers who live on the coast. They did not fair much better as its lunar high tide and there was plenty of flooding there today with the torrential rains and high winds, but their power was restored quicker. After going 24 hours without a shower, a way to cook food, and intermittent heat, they headed for their mother's. I'll wait it out here with the sheep, the dogs and the small generator I got powering this computer.

I know, no pictures so it never happened, but maybe if you do a google search you will see some pictures. We got clobbered today.

http://images.google.com/images?rlz...e&ie=UTF-8&q=maine ice storm&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi

good collection here: http://www.boston.com/news/local/gallery/121208_readersweatherphotos/

Best one I could find:

Stay warm and stay healthy Travis. Hope you get power back soon.

Wow Travis I know I am a relative newcomer to North America but I always thought that Canada had it bad as far as weather goes. To me the past few years the north east USA seems to be the worst place for bad weather. Even in the summer with the torrential rains and rivers. Sorry to hear you are without power. What happens to the sheep in something like a ice storm. Do they generate sufficient heat of their own not to have their coats freeze? Keep warm and look after yourself.

flooding was horrible here on the coast soth of you, Im sure you got hit bad with the colder weather, we had only rain.

good luck.

mother nature has certainly been busy this past year reminding us that she rules, the hurricanes, blizzards, mudslides, etc.

Are you sure you haven't been felling trees again?

Stay warm, dry, and safe. I hope you get your power back online soon.

Vaughn McMillan said:

Are you sure you haven't been felling trees again?

Stay warm, dry, and safe. I hope you get your power back online soon.

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You know its funny, those trees I tried to drop last year were on this rockwall between the road a field. I wanted to get rid of the trees because it crowds in on the field, and as you know, one went backwards and took out the power lines. Today I cut some of those trees because they were laden with ice and fallen across the road.

I would have liked to cut them all, but trees laden with ice are dangerous to fell, not to mention being slippery treading for the logger (me).

Good thing you have plenty of firewood. Stay warm, stay safe.

Rob Keeble said:

Wow Travis I know I am a relative newcomer to North America but I always thought that Canada had it bad as far as weather goes. To me the past few years the north east USA seems to be the worst place for bad weather. Even in the summer with the torrential rains and rivers. Sorry to hear you are without power. What happens to the sheep in something like a ice storm. Do they generate sufficient heat of their own not to have their coats freeze? Keep warm and look after yourself.

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Rob when I worked for the railroad and got to work all over North America, I came to the same conclusion you did. We got it bad up here. Not that I mind, 34 years of life here means you get used to it. That means back up heat, generators, plenty of gas always on hand, and of course stored water for washing and living.

As for the sheep, they are fine. They got 3 inch wool jackets on so they are warm. The ice doesn't bother them, nor the rain or snow, but what gets sheep is the wind. Wool is great at keeping a person or animal warm, but its not wind proof. As long as the sheep can get out of the wind...even if its -20º F they are just fine.

As for heat, they actually generate a lot of heat from eating. Corn has high energy levels so if its super cold I give them some corn and plenty of grain. That mixes with the hay they get and they get what amounts to a warm meal in their stomachs all night.

For the moment I'm fine...generator dependent but fine. (It's amazing what you can do with only 2500 watts of power though )

It has definitely been a wild couple of days in this region. Lots of power failures and travel disruptions. We were lucky today to have been on the warm side of the system for once. 16C here this afternoon, but heavy rain and gusts to 90kph.
Hang in there Travis. Look on the bright side, it could be worse - we could be out in the Gulf of Maine on a lobster boat!

Take care
Peter

Wow, this night just keeps getting worse.

I woke up at 2:30 AM to the sound of my NightHawk going off. Seems as if I got a propane leak somewhere in the house, most likely from the boiler that has not been run in 30 hours. I shut all the valves off of course and cannot smell the gas but its at 200 (ppm I assume). So as I type this I am waiting for a burner tech ($$$) and shivering at 47º inside.

An AP Photo

That is not good. Thank goodness for the alarm.
Don't you use wood heat?
We are forecast to have freezing rain starting Monday. I'll get the generator set in place and extra water in for flushing the toilet. We have plenty of drinking water on hand.
Travis, keep warm.

No Frank, no wood heat for me. I cut plenty of it (100+ this year) but its all for sales not to heat the house. Maybe some day I will, but financially it does not make sense with the added cost of home owners insurance. Plus in the amount of time it takes me to put up 8 cord of firewood I can cut 16 cord of tree length wood and sell it to the papermills and simply use the money to buy propane. No feeding a woodstove all winter and no mess in the house.

That aside, things got better when the power came on an hour ago. The burner tech did not find a leak, but lacked having a gas/carbon monoxide detector with him to check the air. We all suspect the NightHawk is malfunctioning at this point. It was thought that with the power out, the AC/battery powered NightHawk has a battery that is running low. Now that the power is on though, and has a new battery, its still on alarm. It is saying Gas too.

Since this is a Foster Home we have multiple Carbon Monoxide and Smoke Detectors and none of them are going off. That tells you is a Gas issue and not a CM issue. At the same time its saying its getting a reading of 215 ppm, which is up from last night of 191 ppm. If that was truly the case, at least with CM I would not be typing this. 35 ppm is headache stage and 800 is lethal. At 200 I would be passed out.

I think we will just replace the NightHawk and see if that works. When you don't have a way to check the detector that is checking something that has no smell, no taste or visual sign, you don't have much to go on. Better to replace it and then go from there. If the new unit acts up, we will have to pressure test the entire system.

Think of New Englanders in your prayers tonight. I am fine but 880,000 New Englanders are still without power and tonight its going below the zero mark (in Fahrenheit). Without power furnaces don't work and pipes burst. My house was at 47º most of the night and it was rough, and that was on a 20 degree night. I can't imagine -5º without power. A lot of people are going to be cold!

Prayers sent. Glad to hear your doing ok. Might try putting that Nighthawk where it's got fresh air to see if it clears up, doubtful, but worth the check.

Stay safe, Travis....

If it's any comfort...

View attachment 26639

With the extended cold, ice will be the biggest problem for us in the PNW. Could set a record. Sold the 7500 watt generator today, but still have the 4000w unit. Ice plays havoc on the trees (across power lines) here too.

All you guys, take care!

Travis Johnson said:

...When you don't have a way to check the detector that is checking something that has no smell, no taste or visual sign, you don't have much to go on...

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If you're talking about propane, I would be highly surprised if the propane delivered to your house does not have odor added to it. You're right about propane itself having virtually no odor, but for that reason, propane suppliers add chemicals to give it the distinct (and strong) smell so it can be more easily detected by humans...hopefully before an explosion. They do the same with natural gas.

I'd second Darren's suggestion to take the NightHawk outdoors into a known gas-free environment, and see what it says.

I hope the weather improves for all you folks in that corner of the continent. Bundle up and stay safe.

Yep. Our propane has an odor. Can't find a propane leak detector locally. Will have to go online.
Ice storm predicted here for tonight or early tomorrow. Generator, extra gasoline and water on hand.

It has looked bad on the weather channel for all of you guys. My prayers are with all of you and stay safe. Be careful doing chores and such as going to a hospital isn't the "easy" path normally found.
Travis, on a side note, before freezing to death, remember in olden days the mountain men would gut a buffer' or cow or horse or mule and crawl into the body cavity to stay warm, so start looking for that candidate in your flock.

Yeah I did try to clear the NightHawk by sticking it outside, but the darn temp was so cold that I was afraid it did more harm then good. Ultimately though it did clear itself and is working fine now.

I did find out that the power on our road was cut off because of a single tree limb that was on the wires. Heck if I had known that I would have cut the limb down myself and found a way to retrip the breaker. That would have saved 30 hours of no power, but the last time we did that, the power company gave us grief for it. Jeffrey said he was tempted to take his log loader on his truck and pull the tree down too.

It was a long time ago but we had a storm like this and so we fired up one of the skidders and started pushing trees off the lines. It worked great because with a skidder you could get to some spots that a tractor just wouldn't go. That worked great until the glorified meter reader came by and saw what we were killing their overtime and had us stop our good deed. I bet before we were stopped we pushed like 7 or 8 trees off the line.

Now before I get grief for this, you got to remember, without power we got 6 or 7 dairy farms in town that need electricity to keep their milk cool and the milking machines going. They got generators but running 120 hp tractors to power up the farms is not cheap to run.