This winter that just passed was a one heck of a disappointment as we didn’t see nearly as much winter weather as we usually do up here in New Hampshire. There wasn’t nearly as much snow as is normal. We didn’t have the usual sub-zero temperatures. Instead we had warmer than normal temps and quite a bit of rain. (Actually, a lot of rain.)
Then in a period of not quite two weeks we had two snowstorms, each dropping about 18 inches of snow. The first one wasn’t all that bad with the snow being ‘normal’ snow – not the supper fluffy really cold weather type of snow but still light in weight. The second one was nasty with heavy wet snow and high winds which took down trees and power lines all over the state, with around 200,000 customers without power at one point. We here at the The Gulch were one of them. Almost 85% of our town lost power.
Our power went out around half-past 7am Thursday morning before the height of the storm. Fortunately I had prepared the Official Weekend Pundit Portable Generator ahead of time and it only took about 2 minutes to get it up and running and the power switched over. Fortunately we still had cable so the WP Mom could catch her TV shows and I could continue working from home. And then the cable went out and TV and Internet went away that afternoon. (Fortunately for me I had the foresight to be working from local copies of the documents I was creating so the loss of the ‘Net didn’t prevent me from continuing my work).
Friday morning dawned and power was still out. I had to venture out to get more propane for the generator and fortunately the roads were in good shape. The only time I had to use 4WD was getting out of the driveway.
Driving down to our local Tractor Supply Company store to refill the empty propane tank was easy...but the number of trees I saw that had torn free from the ground or broke off above the ground was mind boggling. That certainly explained the power/cable/telephone outages. (Yes, I called the TSC store on my cell phone to see if they were open and able to fill propane tanks before I left The Gulch.)
On my second foray out later that morning I did a little exploring and found the where the power lines and fiber optic cables that feed out part of town were taken out. A huge tree had broken off about 8 feet up the trunk and took out the lines...and the two power poles to either side of where it came down.
It was amazing to see what heavy wet snow and wind can do between downed trees and power lines, blocked roads, and damaged homes.
We were fortunate that our power and cable were restored early yesterday evening so we were out for a day-and-a-half. Others are still without power and many will not see power back until Sunday at the earliest.
This is one of the problems with spring snowstorms, particularly if they are Nor’easters. They are often just like what we experienced on Wednesday and Thursday – heavy wet snow, high gusty winds, and widespread power outages.
Hopefully we won’t see any more between now and when I put the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout back into the lake in mid May.
