Well, it's now surpassed 24 hours without power......

[Kevin W Johnson]

We lost power last night about 9:00pm, and there isn't any word on when we might get power back. I have one small generator keeping the fridge cold, and am waiting on a call from HD about a larger unit coming from South Carolina. They are supposed to stay open tonight till the generators arrive.

Many, many trees down around here, and the power company once est. 900,000 without power. People 1/2 mile away have power, so it's random....

That's about it from the "dark zone", might have to take up neander woodworking soon.

[Van Huskey]

Hate it for you! The ice storms in SC always get us, we are deep down in a cul-de-sac with tons of trees and above ground lines, very low on the repower list! The hurricanes get us in Louisiana BUT we are closer to businesses here so the wait isn't as long. We have done over 6 days in SC and 5 days once in LA, never fun.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Mother nature must have felt guilty about what she did to the North coast of Ohio July 4th 1969 and gave us a free pass this time around.
We had a little rain & some thunder - nothing unusual.
50/75 miles to the South of us got hammered bad according to the news.

[Brian Tymchak]

50/75 miles to the South of us got hammered bad according to the news.

Yea, we got smacked pretty good. There's still 130,000+ w/o power around Columbus this morning, from what I saw on the news. I was fairly lucky in that regard. out of power only 23 hrs, no damage. Next door neighbor lost a lot of shingles and 3 large trees.

I was driving home from work Friday afternoon when that storm hit us. I thought I was in a tornado. The back end of my truck lifted up enough to take the weight off the tires and move the back of the truck over a few inches while driving down the road. Was pretty interesting there for a few seconds!!

Lot's of tree and roof damage in our area. Some very large power poles down on one major road in the northeast corner of Franklin county. AEP saying 5-7 days to get 90% of customers restored. Going to be lots of miserable people as daytime highs are staying above 90.

We're getting messages on our weather channel asking people to not water lawns as there are power outages with some pumping stations around the city.

[Matt Meiser]

We usually have several outages of at least a few hours or more. DTE Energy has classified our circuit as a "Red Dot Circuit" meaning improvements and maintenance are necessary due to a high rate of outages. I finally installed a standby generator early this spring. Our longest outage since--just long enough for the generator to actually start but I think the power came back before it even transferred. I know of one other outage--I counted to 9s before the power came back, and the generator starts at 10s.

Friday's storm went south of us. The area around Findlay OH got slammed pretty hard and they said there were 6 overturned tractor-trailers on I-75 south of there. But in Toledo and extreme SE Michigan it was never more than a little lightning off in the distance and very little rain. The outdoor concert my wife and her friends went to wasn't affected.

I was returning from a very late lunch errand when it was blowing when it looked like we might get something. I noticed that there were trucks at the Verizon tower near our house and then I noticed a guy about 1/2 way up the tower (fingers crossed that he installing the 4GLTE equipment!) Bet THAT'S a fun place to be with an approaching storm!

[Brian Elfert]

I installed an automatic standby generator when my house was built 11 years ago. I've had two power failures in all that time. I pump a lot of water from my basement so I didn't want to lose power and have the basement flood. The central air in my house is on a 20 amp breaker so I could actually hook it up to the generator if I got too miserable.

One of the potential drawbacks to my generator is that it uses natural gas. I always figure if there is a disaster bad enough that I lose both power and natural gas that my house probably wouldn't be liveable at that point anyhow.

[Matt Meiser]

Ours is big enough to run our heat pump. But the basement is the biggest reason for ours. I don't really trust the battery back up sump pump, especially if we are away when the power goes out, if it stayed off for a considerable time.

[David Weaver]

Are the gas lines pressurized by electric? Most of the older ones I've seen are pressurized by motors that run on the gas in the lines. We've lost power for up to a week here (we're also in the woods, and sections of the neighborhood might be up while others are down - if that happens and the outage is widespread, you know you'll be out for a while because only part of the neighborhood needs to come back online.

Gas pressure never drops, which I like, because no matter how long the power is out, I still have hot water. That'll change when my water tank poops out and I have to get a new one that's fan driven, but for now, the old style tank delivers hot water when the power is out (we are on town water and the pumping station is never out).

[Brian Elfert]

I have no idea how gas is pressurized. I know I have never lost gas service during a power outage. Some natural disasters can disrupt gas service with broken pipes and such. I figure if I do lose electric and gas service it is probably time to leave the area.

[charlie knighton]

lost power 10 pm friday night, luckly it came back up saturday 6:30 pm saturday, sorry you are still without power

in winter have never lost our gas furnace but there is a electric fan that distributes the heat, so no heat

[Chuck Wintle]

We lost power last night about 9:00pm, and there isn't any word on when we might get power back. I have one small generator keeping the fridge cold, and am waiting on a call from HD about a larger unit coming from South Carolina. They are supposed to stay open tonight till the generators arrive.

Many, many trees down around here, and the power company once est. 900,000 without power. People 1/2 mile away have power, so it's random....

That's about it from the "dark zone", might have to take up neander woodworking soon.
Do you have a backup power source?

[Kevin W Johnson]

Do you have a backup power source?

Yeah, but they're dead now. Didn't matter much, internet is out too. If not for a smart phone, we wouldn't have much if any connection to real news, etc.

I'm headed home now (short stop for the wife to get a couple things), and I'm going to light things up tonight.

[Brian Tymchak]

We had another strong storm come through the Columbus area again last evening. I heard there were yet more power outages, more trees down. Some storms had very large hail (golf-ball to baseball-size).

Guess we got on Mother Nature's list somehow...:(

[Jim Matthews]

We went through the same sort of "Did you hear that?" storm last year, after Irene blew up the Connecticut river.

No trees down, nor damaged power lines but we were without electricity for 6 days, 18 hours... if I ever get my hands on the voice actor behind "Rita" of National Grid I'll wring her perky little neck. Until the utilities are compelled to bury power lines, this will happen again. I installed a GE natural gas generator to cover demands for the refrigerator, well pump, furnace and a few lights. Our natural gas supplier has independent power at each pressurization center.

They're built to withstand hurricane conditions, indefinitely.

If those are damaged - we're probably looking at something cosmic, or ballistic - at which point no amount of preparation would matter.

The only good side of last year's storm is the size of my free woodpile.

[Belinda Barfield]

Our area got hit last night. Still 40,000 or so without power. Hope it's back on for you soon Kevin. When I got to the town where I work this a.m. at 5:30 all the power was off. As I turned off the main road the power came back on for our little side street.

[Myk Rian]

Everyone remember the blackout of 2003? We had no power for a week with that one.
Good time to reacquaint yourselves with your neighbors.

[Ben Hatcher]

I drove from Columbus, OH to VA after the storm, basically following its path down SR33 and I-77. There were very few towns with power. I had the pleasure of a 2 hour detour through SE Ohio/WV due to a bridge closure. Everything except for the power plant was blacked out. There was at least one tree in the road every half mile. Charlestown got hit pretty hard. Further south, debris lined the median of I-77 from Charlestown WV to the border. The next day, if a gas station had power, they had a sign saying they're out of regular and diesel. What a mess. I can't even imagine how many millions of dollars of food are going to waste because of this storm.

[Kevin W Johnson]

I drove from Columbus, OH to VA after the storm, basically following its path down SR33 and I-77. There were very few towns with power. I had the pleasure of a 2 hour detour through SE Ohio/WV due to a bridge closure. Everything except for the power plant was blacked out. There was at least one tree in the road every half mile. Charlestown got hit pretty hard. Further south, debris lined the median of I-77 from Charlestown WV to the border. The next day, if a gas station had power, they had a sign saying they're out of regular and diesel. What a mess. I can't even imagine how many millions of dollars of food are going to waste because of this storm.

Many many millions. I know of two grocery stores that had to toss out 100% of their cold storage items. The Foodlion just down the road only had milk this evening, but has two tractor trailor loads scheduled for tomorrow to restock.

Fortunately I had a small generator that I bought at an auction many years ago, that up until this time hadn't been used in a power outage. I had tried to start it recently, and knew it had a carb issue causing it to leak gas. I moved it into the shop Friday night after the power went out and torn the carb down. I gave it a good cleaning, made a new gasket to replace the one that inevitably sticks and breaks, reassembled and got it running. Having that saved the stuff in our fridge(s) till I got a larger generator.

I'm working on plans now for an easy plug-n-power setup for the next instance.

[Kevin W Johnson]

Everyone remember the blackout of 2003? We had no power for a week with that one.
Good time to reacquaint yourselves with your neighbors.


Fortunately for us, we already have good relations with some of the neighbors. Fortunately for them, we have an inground swimming pool that made beating the heat an easier thing to do. We had a BIG hot dog grill out saturday, and utilized the pool for heat relief.

Oh, and our power was restored last night at midnite, just 45 minutes after the generator had powered the A/C long enough to get to 75 (down from 88) and cycle off.

[Brian Elfert]

At least one of the local grocery stores here has a large generator that allows them to keep most of the store running if the power goes out. I believe they even had air conditioning, but about 25% of the refrigerated coolers had no power so they had to move things around. I seem to recall the bakery was closed. A severe storm with a tornado had come through and knocked out power in the area.

[Matt Meiser]

Everyone remember the blackout of 2003? We had no power for a week with that one.
Good time to reacquaint yourselves with your neighbors.

Yep, I do. I was in Columbus, OH and my wife called to say it was out. My dad went over and helped her with the generator, but it wasn't enough for our AC and it was hot. She was not happy that I got to sleep in a hotel with AC. I drove home the next afternoon and stopped in Bowling Green, OH and bought gas cans and gas because she had to go to the south side of Toledo the night before to find an open gas station.

One of the guys that worked for me got stuck outside of Toronto. His car was on E, he had no cash, and he'd skipped lunch trying to finish up a project so he could come home that evening. His plan was to stop and eat and fill up on his way out of town. The hotel wouldn't let him check back in so he ended up spending the night in his car.