Tuesday, January 7, 2014

What A Storm!

     The storm turned out to be as bad as was predicted.  Often the weather service makes predictions that don't come true, but not this time.  We ended up with about 12 inches of snow on the ground, temperatures in the minus teens, and wind chills of -40 degrees. The roads were impassable because of 5-6 foot snow drifts and even the snow plows were getting stuck.  Hundreds were stranded on Interstate 70.  Our son said when he was on the Martinsville Overpass there were cars backed up as far as he could see towards Casey.  Can you imagine sitting in a car for hours with the temperature below 0 and windchills in the -30's?  Hopefully, those people were prepared with blankets and food and water.
     Mom's power went off at 11:00 on Sunday so she & my sister, who is visiting from Arizona, headed over to our house.  Our power then went off about 2:00.  We went into survival mode trying to figure out how to keep warm, what we could eat, etc.  The power was off for 24 hours.  Fortunately, we have 2 fireplaces in our house so we were able to keep the basement at a relatively comfortable 64 degrees.  Because of the windows and the openness of the rooms the main floor temp had lowered to 43 degrees by the time the electricity came back on.  We were so grateful to not have to go through another night without power since the forecast was for temperatures in the minus teens again with strong winds.  I'm not sure we could have kept the upstairs above freezing another 24 hours.
     It also helped to have a gas cookstove in the basement.  Unfortunately the oven control is digital so we coudn't use the oven but managed to have hot meals cooked on the burners.
     We had lots of time to be grateful for the things that made the experience easier and to think of some that would have helped so good things came out of the discomfort.
     Some of the things we would have on hand included:
1. Lots of wood and a grate to sit over the fire in the fireplace for cooking purposes.
2.  Plenty of easily prepared food & adequate water .
3. Lots of aluminum foil for cooking/baking on the grate and tongs to remove the items
4. A gas stove with manual controls so we could use the oven.
5. Plenty of blankets.
6. Kerosene lamps and battery powered lanterns with lots of kerosene and batteries available.
7. Candles & matches
8. Headlamps.   One of the most helpful light sources we found were the headlamps we use when we go for walks in the country at night.  We were able to walk all over the house hands free.  We also used the lights on our heads to shine onto the table so we could play Quirkle.
9. The car always full of gas because we charged our cell phones with the car running.
10. Board games to play and books to read.
      

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