asukawashere

Seriously, what's up with our weather? Two weeks ago I still had semi-tropical fish outdoors because it was so unusually warm for October; now we have a Nor'easter dumping 6" of white stuff on our heads?

We're about to lose power, too, actually - fire dept. just knocked on our door and informed us they (or maybe UI) are cutting off our street because there's a tree about to go down over some lines and they're worried about an electrical fire. o_O' I'm going to have to go out to the garage and haul out the generator, probably... not gonna be fun in the snow.

Fortunately I dug up the dahlia tubers yesterday XD Unfortunately I left the Cyperus alternifolius outside. Oops.

bigstick120

Crazy! I have about 1.5" in MD, first time we have seen now in Oct. since 1973. Should be an interesting winter!

asukawashere

Outage was fortunately brief - no generator required, thankfully. Hopefully the power will stay on through the night, or the fish and shrimp and I will all be popsicles by morning.

Snow in October around here is unusual but not unheard of - but typically it's just flurries that don't stick, or a light dusting. This kind of accumulation is record-shattering. And because it was so warm so recently, most of our trees still have plenty of leaves on them o_O' Thus all the downed power lines.

Feels like only a few weeks ago (more like a month and a half, but still...) we were still mopping up the damage and outages from Irene. Now we have blizzards to deal with.

All things considered, I'd prefer the cyclone. At least when we lost power then it was warm. o_O'

Storms

I'm thinking the only way to safely keep fish in CT is to have a backup generator for these situations. Luckily, UI is much better than CL&P at keeping their infrastructure fairly up to date. Do you realize that in much of the country, power companies are required by law to actually trim trees ahead of time so that any tree falling has no possibility of damaging power lines? It's a shame that CT power companies are reactive instead of proactive about trees. I would think that trimming ahead of time would actually make business sense - I mean trimming a tree is much cheaper than replacing blown up transformers, right?

asukawashere

When you've got as many tanks as me, yeah, the generator is a must. One or two tanks could probably be supported with battery-operated air pump filters and a fireplace to provide heat :P

CT power companies do trim ahead of time when branches/trees overhang lines or get in the way of maintenance. The thing is, it's a heavily forested state, and they can't cut down every single tree that could conceivably ever cross a power line. Nor can they trim trees on private property without the owner's consent (unless the town/state mandates the removal of the tree... did you know we actually have tree wardens?). See this summary for more info on state tree law.

Given the size of trees, a trunk 40 or 50 feet away from the lines can fall and still take lines down - but it would cost billions of dollars (and get the environmental people up in arms, to boot) if the power crews were to remove every tree in a 50 foot radius of power lines. Removing all the trees is conceivable in prairie and desert states, where tree growth is sparse, but not so much so around here.

Franzi

I lost power from Saturday noon-ish to Sunday 5pm. There were A LOT of damaged trees...massive limbs snapped from the weight of wet snow. Luckily we still get hot water during outages so I had to keep emptying/refilling the tank to keep it at around 80.

Riverboa

Glad everyone is okay.

CrazyCory

My place is near UCONN. I lost power Saturday night. Still no power at the house. Rescued most fishes and some shrimps to friends house in a 5 1/2. Hope the rest will survive. I ordered a generator right before the storm and will hopefully be here by Friday.

Luckily my new 40B is still under construction. I will not get it up and running before I get the generator hooked up.

This weather sucks.

vancat

Sorry Ke! IT DOES SUCK. I have a generator mostly for the fish!

khanzer22

We didn't lose power, but 2 days no power during Irene, but I'm considering to buy a generator if this type of crazy weather happens again...


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