Virginia and East Coast Members: Be Safe

[Rock and Glock]

Hope ya'll are safe in the storms, and the electricity is restored soon.

This will let you test your planning and preparations!

Good luck!

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[varob]

Coming to you via the ol' generator.

[BugDude]

I talked to some of my buddies in Virginia today. Ironically, it is much hotter there than it has been here. They had some bad winds take out a lot of trees and power lines. The wind in the mountains gets funnelled in the valleys and picks up speed like putting your thumb over a water hose.

[Chad Rogers]

The whining coming out of DC residents who can't have sushi, sorbet or lattes for a day or two is embarrassing.

[archer51]

The whining coming out of DC residents who can't have sushi, sorbet or lattes for a day or two is embarrassing.

Thankfully I live far enough south of DC that I can't hear them. Either that or the noise from the daily I-95 NoVA traffic jams is blocking it out!.

[rstickle]

The whining coming out of DC residents who can't have sushi, sorbet or lattes for a day or two is embarrassing.

Half of them are waiting rescue form the powerless stalled Metro escalators!

(I actually heard that on a local DC news program during an outage about 10 years ago, the newscaster phrased it as "people being trapped on the escalators".)

[Ghettokracker71]

The storm hit us basically without warning. A little hot out, but otherwise beautiful day,... next thing I know its close to pitch black outside and I can hear a rumbling and see crazy shaped clouds. We just now got power back this morning (about 9am). Approx $2-3k damage done on the property I have found so far, I've got 3 trees completely wasted. One of our porches lost its ceiling and ceiling fan. My daughters BRAND NEW playhouse/swingset that was under construction seems to be ruined. We were picking up our property from 2-3 blocks away that had blown UPHILL the whole way to get there. Odd thing is how some stuff stayed put, yet other stuff was knocked all over. Lost alot of groceries as well. I had to eat out twice yesterday, and for breakfast this AM and had to make a run to the grocery store. Roads were covered in debris. Trees down all over. I'm honestly surprised I have internet connection. Taking a break from cleaning up, still got a bit to go.

The heat and a very young child(<3 years old.) has not made for a friendly weekend with no power.

We tried to find ice yesterday, and found out there was no ice to be found within a 40 mile radius of where we are. We actually live a little of the beaten path down some backroads. My neighbors have a horse stables, goats, cows,..etc. I pass farms anytime I need to get into town.

We have well water, so I also lost running water when the power went out.

[packinnova]

yeah stay safe guys. I got lucky. My power came back Saturday. A fair number of my coworkers are still without power and some being told they won't have power back until AT LEAST next Saturday. I'm right on the western side of the ridge (along the river). Thankfully the power company had been sending crews to trim back the trees along the lines up here about a week prior to the storms. I suspect that's why my area wasn't as bad with the outages.

[Black Knight]

The storm blew a limb from my neighbor's Bradford Pear onto my roof. Fortunately there was no damage other than the limb setting on the roof. The neighbor paid to have it removed. We never lost power but a good many did.

[Ghettokracker71]

Just read in the local newspaper ALOT of folks in our general area are still without power. They have setup all the schools that still have power as "cool down stations" where folks can cool down. Charge their electronics, take showers, etc....paper also said there are folks helping to restore power from as far away as Quebec.

[Yankeejib]

It's hard to find any mention of all this from the main-stream media.

[BugDude]

This is my first hurricaine season in Florida after leaving the mountains of Virginia...and it seems like the hurricaines and heat have hit there instead of here. All my buddies gave me crap about moving here, the heat, the wind, the damage...and they're the ones getting it up there. The irony is mind boggling.

[packinnova]

That's ok...try wrapping your head around some of the nutty articles coming out of the DC region now. To the effect of...because 911 was down, people are dying!. I've both heard nightly news reports and read articles stating the same. How about...STUFF HAPPENS and 911 can't be perfect. Back to the old spoons make rosie fat argument...

[ctr]

We are back up and running. I'll echo what others said, there was no warning. One moment the weather was fine, the next it was a freight train. We grabbed the dog and went into a car in the garage, the only shelter available to us. Spent about an hour or so in a very hot place.

Power went out for about a day. We were very lucky, and God looked after us for sure. Not one bit of damage. Neighbors lost siding, parts of roofs, and a couple of complete gutter systems came off. Lots of downed trees.

Things have returned to normal for us and we feel very blessed. Still get jumpy with each thunderstorm now.

[DaveH]

Back on the grid. Nice but not necessary to have the AC back.

Around half the folk around here are still without power. Projections are that they will not all be back on the grid until Friday night or Saturday.

We had 600k outages, over the local service area. In my immediate area, the 6,000 outages were very spotty. I my case, my side of the street was out. The neighbors across the street had power. The local shopping center was out. The one five miles away was open. Etc.

A second serious boomer came through Saturday night and upped the ante -- e.g. took out stores up the road that the line squall missed. One of those "scattered locally heavy" jobs.

Friday was a classic line Squall storm. Moved through very quickly. Winds 60-85 mph. Spotty serious structural damage -- mostly from falling trees.

Our personal reparation / preparedness worked well. Able to help out family and others. Lots, of neighbor-to-neighbor help going on.

My 12kW generator got us through without any glitches. No food spoilage. My oxygen concentrator never missed a lick. True, no AC. But I never had AC for the 27 years of my life. No big deal. Fans and ice did the trick.