Ice storm is past and back on-line.

[Skinny Shooter]

Sure glad I bought that pellet stove and generator. http://www.huntchat.com/showthread.p...ight=generator

As usual the weather patterns did not listen to the weather forecast predictions and we got dumped on by an ice storm which started last Saturday night.

Got my first emergency call at 5am Sunday and we still had power. By 7:30am we lost power which only lasted till yesterday afternoon.
Every road in the area had trees down or trees on wires etc. There were calls for occupied vehicles trapped under trees, on wires, under wires, etc. Sheesh, why do people think they have to be on the road in that kind of weather.
While responding to a tree on a house up in the mountain from my home, I found a lady trapped between two trees with lines down. She had found the road blocked by a tree, and before she could get turned around another one fell over right behind her. No life hazard though so I got help coming to her and continued on.
One of our guys had a near miss when a tree fell a few feet from him while trying to clear trees off a road. Our Rescue had a near miss from another tree shortly after that.
Awesome thing though, you could hear the trees snapping apart up in the woods and it sounded like gunshots. This continued till today.
The wind kicked up Sunday night which made matters worse and got home for the night on Sunday around midnight.

The generator went thru about 7 gals of gas in 31 hours by running it and the pellet stove off and on to get the house warm and then shut down during the night hours. It worked well to power a lamp and scanner plus recharge pager, cellphone and 2-way radio batteries.
People in our area are still out and it could be a week till power is restored.
I counted 13 bucket trucks and support vehicles in my immediate neighborhood.
Kudos to the utility guys who braved the extreme weather to get our power back on!

Anyone else have problems?

Btw, there was a lot of firewood laying along the roads from the utility crews so I got a trailer load of oak, ash, cherry and birch right before dark last night.

[Rocky Raab]

Free firewood?

Geez, Skinny, a REAL entrepreneur would've sent the county a fat bill for "emergency road clearing services" too!

We're supposed to have three storms in five days, starting later today. Thy are saying a 100% chance of a white Christmas. <shrug> I'll be in Phoenix, what do I care? LOL!

[Swift]

We made it through unscathed! Sure we got the ice but we naver lost power.

[petey]

I was in Sandusky, OH Saturday- Sunday and had to drive home through that crap. Left about 1:00PM on Sunday. The toll road was horrible...you think you pay to be on it, they would address it a little better. Never passed a plow the whole way! I saw over 30 vehicles off the road including 3 different semi's. I wanted to get out of there since they were a level 2 and level 3 they shut the roads down or so the news said. (City folk)

As soon as I got off the toll (I-80) to regular I-80 on the West side of Youngstown the roads were bare. Yup, that's right; I left the toll booth, the roads were perfect. Imagine that?? I'm sure that's what 80 will be like once they toll that sucker in PA (Thanks you moron Rendell... hope your Philly mass transit system is worth it you SOB) Bridge repairs my rear! Oh that's another rant...

Drove another 30 miles closer to home and it started getting worse but they were still mostly bare.

Anyhow, we got about 10" of fresh powder Sunday night, under a sheet of 1/4" of ice. Winter is here baby!

[gumpokc]

Glad your ok Skinny.

We caught the othe rpart of that icestrom down in Okla last weekend.
Lost power from the 8th, to the 16th.
We have a gas stove, gas water heater, and city water so we had water pressure.
Wasen't too bad, just used the camping gear and was "indoor camping".

We'd alternate heating and letting the house air out.
Get the temp up to about 60 or so before bed then shut everythign down. BY morning was usually still 46-55 degrees inside, so you usually got dressed posthaste, but it never got really bad.

we thought about getting a generator, but waiting to get the box wired first. I know you can backfeed through the dryer socket, but I just feel better about it, especially in an older home with older wiring, by getting the shutoff and pigtail installed.
Once thats done, then I'll get the generator.