The Ice Storm

Yesterday Debbie & I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. We had a nice quiet evening at home (going out wasn't much of an option). Just after midnight things started beeping - the power was out. This wasn't really a shock because they were talking about an ice storm and it was bad when we went to bed. We put in a big wood fire to warm the house in case the power went out too. In fact, I was out generator shopping just yesterday. I looked at a lot of models but in the end I decided not to get one yet. I wanted to get a more permanent one (only available by special order). Just about everything in the house runs on electricity; the water, heat etc. Without power it's not as nice a place to be. Even the solar system (if it ever gets installed) wouldn't help because it ONLY works when there is a grid connection.

So back to last night, you see the basement has a tendency to accumulate water when it rains. There is a sump pump but if the power goes out... I was bailing out water at at 12:30 and again at 1:30. After that it seemed that the water wasn't rising all that fast so I slept until 5:30. Well, there was a lot more water in the basement by that time (and still no power). The bailing started again - with Debbie's help this time. We bailed for a while but we didn't seem to be making much of a dent in the water level. It was getting close to 7:00 when Lowes opens. I figured that if all the generators weren't sold yesterday (there were quite a few there) I might get one this morning if I got there as the store opened. Sure enough, there were just a few generators left and I was able to get one. A half an hour (or less) later and they were all gone - there were quite a few other guys running around the store looking for generators when I was there (while grumbling about flooded basements).

After hooking it up and getting the sump pump going for only a short while the power was back. Oh well... I didn't know how long it would take to get power. We were lucky as a lot of people still don't have power. Perhaps we will just keep this generator (it will save some money over the larger one).

Some photos of the ice:

Ice Storm