Wow. Just had some nasty tornadoes skirt the edge of the Metro area last night; Buffalo Lake got flattened. To my best knowledge there were no fatalities (can’t catch up on the news with no power). Been without electricity for over 12 hours now, and my 'fridge is ominously warm. At least I have water, phone, and a battery in my laptop so the dial-up is a go for now.
It’s this sort of thing that reminds me how good I’ve got it; infrastucture around here is usually so well run that outages are normally no more that a couple of hours or so. This must have been a whopper. When I went home from having a few, the rains had set in with a vengeance, and just about all the streets were flooding from sheer volume. I told the cabbie to be sure and not drown his car, and lots of money to him.
In case I need it, is there a way to recharge my laptop battery if normal power doesn’t resume in a while? Thanks.
I was playing at The Dubliner in St. Paul when the storm hit. It was beneficial in a way, the bar was packed all night because no one wanted to go out in that storm. Other then a brief incident hydroplaning on University, I had no troubles. But when you see standing water about a foot deep on the interstate, you know you had a bad storm. I’m just lucky I was riding in a Jeep, those things are invincible.
We had a similar situation earlier this week. A couple small towns basically got wiped off the map. One was Deschler, which may or may not even bother to rebuild. Sad when you think about it. Just south of us they got 13 inches of rain in a couple hours and record size hail. The hail was cantelope size! (7.5 inches in diameter). There was one fatality. Guy got stuck in his garage when the tornado hit. He was still alive when it blew over but when they were trying to get him out another tornado came through and the rescuers had to race for cover. He didn’t make it through that one. More tornados last night just south and some North of us. Thankfully we have somehow missed the really bad stuff.
Got an amazing light show. I was watching from our garage in case the water started building up and I had to pump it out to keep it out of the basement. I tried recording some of it on my minidisc. The volume of thunder varied so much it didn’t really turn out. Kept getting either too much wind noise or overloading on the thunder.
Good thing you got water. Just keep the fridge closed as much as you can to keep in the cold. When the power comes back up take stock and give the insurance company a call. You can also move any high cost, low use, perishables from the fridge to the freezer. If not, then have a big cookout\picnic with friends and eat it all. That’s what we did earlier this spring when we lost power for three days. Had a big potluck with the neighboors and play some tunes.
Before the power went belly-up, I was watching the news about Buffalo Lake. The police chief said that he and some other folks were watching the oncoming tornado (reportedly abt. 3/4 of a mile across, yikes), when overhead came an entire big pine tree, roots and all, slowly cartwheeling in midair. Weird. They agreed that it was probably best to get inside at that point.
Easy solution. Just get some overeager PeTA member to volunteer to replace the hamster and you’re home free.
Looks like the storms should break here within the hour. Not that I like thunderstorms, but it’ll be nice to see this heat break and we sure can use the rain.
You might ask “energy.” There’s an attachment you can get and hook up to your car to recharge the batteries, I mean besides a 110v. generator that is powered by the fan belt. I think the ones I saw just plug into the cig. lighter.
Second thought, just head West, young man. Get out of that Mid-West. You don’t know what you’re missing. But eventually we’ll all have to move south, as the 11,500 year ice age cycle is upon us. It’ll only take about 10 years of very unsual weather and snow accumulation to drive us out anyway. Be glad you don’t live in Alaska or N. Canada.
So that’s where all the rain disappeared to. We were supposed to be getting that same frontal system today but last night the rain fizzled out over Lake Michigan or dropped into Illinois. It’s dreadfully dry here. I may have to get out my flute and do a rain dance.
My first instinct was to ask whether a lake wouldn’t be quite flat to start with, though I was risking making light of a serious natural disaster.
Then my dullard brain realised that this might be the name of a town or city; you 'mercans will call a city anything now we’re not in charge to keep you in order.
The I looked up the name on the web, and discover it’s a nature reserve. Is that right?
Having generally well behaved weather that wipes it shoes before coming in (floods aside), it’s hard to get the measure on this side of the pond of how bad the storms were - naturally there’s been nothing on the news about it because Ray from Big Brother was told off for using the hottub while inebriated or The Royal Beckhams has released yet another yawn photoshoot because they’ve been out of the headlines for twenty minutes.
So I’m hoping things aren’t as bad as they seem at first, and you get your power back soon Nano.
30,000 households is a lot, but American power companies are pretty effective at dealing with storm damage by shifting crews and sharing workers, so hopefully Nanohedron and his neighbors will have working microwave ovens soon if not already.
It sounds like there was just sufficient warning for folks to take shelter, but it’s still a miracle nobody was killed. Even in a minor storm last winter half a dozen people in the UK got killed by falling trees, car being blown across the street, stuff like that. I guess you guys are better prepared for these sort of conditions.
Fingers crossed for a rapid restoration of electrical power.
Power’s up! Just half an hour shy of thirty-six hours of stillness. I was going to defrost the freezer, anyway…what the hell, no time like the present. Now I’m riding the wave of Western Civ as if nothing happened.
Yes, Chuck, that’s a lot of affected folks. I called the energy company and the lady said they hope to have everything up-and-running by Saturday, fer cryin’ out loud. And they’re not being slack about it. I’ve watched 'em.
Martin, I’m unaware of a nature reserve in the vicinity of Buffalo Lake, but wouldn’t be surprised. In Minnesota there are a number of them to be sure, almost a ho-hum thing. Some days it seems as if you can’t swing a cat without hitting a nature reserve. Fortunately there were no fatalities there, almost a miracle, but given warning and adequate shelter, even the worst tornadoes are survivable. Whether Buffalo Lake will rebuild…well, that’s just another footnote in the history of life in fly-over country.
Lorenzo, what are you talking about? I’m here because of the tornadic events. X-treme weathering, dude. You can’t beat it, it’s totally such a rush. I leave the mellow, sublime beauty of your environs to those who can’t handle sturm und drang.
Nano, I am very interested in your comments about cat-swinging. It’s a bit of a hobby for me, although less so now than just a few years back. As you will know, the first thing every cat-swinger inquires into, is: Is this a good place to swing a cat? I am very excited to hear the Minnesota is not a good place to swing a cat, because of the nature reserves. I don’t get around to it much anymore, what with my work and the whistling, but I used to spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out what a good or bad place for swinging a cat was. I mean, you don’t want to be hitting nature reserves or telephone poles. Highlights of my research included: The NY E-Train Subway at 8:00 am Monday (between Penn Station and Port Authority); Tiffanies the day before Valentine’s Day; and the Second Act of La Forzza Del Destino by Verdi (you know, during that Sorpano Aria) at the Met. (The Met was a bit of a disappointment, actually, because not everyone could see me, and the pleasant sounds of cat-swinging didn’t carry very far, what with the ambient noise. I did get a boutonniere, two wigs, and a diamond earring out of it, though.) Next, I had a ticket for the national delegates’ convention of PeTA (Row 9, Seat 14, right in the middle), but they were making me check the cat at the door, and I thought it would be cruel for her to be away from me, so I didn’t go in.
