Lost power last night about 2130. So I quickly took a shower and headed to work at 2230. Took off at 0600, came home and still no power. Fired up the genny. I've got the frig, freezer and a fan running. I'm also setup for lights after dark.

Good thing I spend time in the Prep forum. IPad 4G comes in handy too.

My sister is up in Baltimore and hers was out for about 12 hours, luckily it was all at night. Excessive heat advisory and no a/c isn't good for her kids or baby on the way, thankfully she's good to go, as are all her neighbors.

I lost power around 1930there Friday evening.  Expected to be a week before restored.

Local waterplant advised that after 48 hrs, water should not be used for drinking.

Ive got a few 5 gal totes of water stashed, and still 15 gallons of gasoline in cans.  I should be OK.

I will say, a 7K generator will JUST run my AC, IF I will get the fan running before i start the compressor ....   whew!

I got up at 0500 yesterday and this morning, finally got all the trees cleaned up out of the yard and road.

Glad that all of you guys are safe.  

That was a nasty storm and to add insult to the injury high humid temps days after.  My wife are thinking of getting a portable generator now.  I would love to get something that has substantial wattage to power a window unit, ref a light or two and a laptop.  I better start researching.  

Head over to the survival forum, lots of good info and people there. That forum is why I have a genny. If you shop Costco they have a good unit on sale now, IF they have any left.

I've now added my XM radio to the genny, got too bored.

This storm they call a "derecho" roared through ground zero DC Friday night.



Tore branches as big around as my thigh out of trees in my back yard.

Luckily none came through our roof.
Others in the area not so lucky.

No power.

Amazing how the big branches all came down in a "derecho" (straight line).



Figured yesterday morning to "bug-out" to the Shenandoah Valley 150 miles away, and spend the night in a hotel while they got the power back on in the DC area.

Day shaping up to be hot as blazes.

Lovely drive along the Skyline Drive where it was evident that the early-risers on the Park Service payroll had cleared the roads for us with chain saws.

Saw a family of wild turkeys cross the road in front of the car.



Got to destination 150 miles away and saw that traffic lights were out in many places in the town.
Many businesses were dark.

Got to our favorite restaurant outside of the town, and it was open!

Had a great meal, and overheard a just-arriving guest mention to the hostess that he had just gotten "the last room at the Econolodge."

WTF?.... over.

Started calling some local hotels.
No vacancy.

Started calling hotels in the area.
No vacancy.

Started calling hotels OUT of the area.
No vacancy.

Not one goddam hotel room available in the whole state of Virginia as of 1900 hours yesterday!!!

Soooooo.... got to drive 150 miles back home to the DC area because that was the ONLY place that I was going to be able to lie down for the night.

I was UNPREPARED.

Somewhere south of Culpeper, my (liberal) wife, out of the blue, said: "We need preparations."

I asked her what did she think was the gun collection and three cases of 9-year-old MRE's in the basement at the house???
The rest of the drive was pretty quiet. I didn't care, because I'd been up since 0500, had driven 400 miles at that point,  and I wasn't much in the mood to think about it, let alone discuss it.

We got to the house, and while 350,000 Virginia customers still had no power, our power was back on. Thermostat had been set on 72 when the power had gone out 24 hours earlier. House felt cold as a meat locker. Considered turning on the furnace.

This morning, we worked on the timber project in the back yard for about 4 hours.
Got all but the very biggest branches.
Gave up when the heat index hit 106 and we couldn't stand up anymore.

Power is back up around the Elkins area.  All is getting back to normal except the stores and restaurants have nothing, and there is no gas (all sold out)

Guys we got storms coming again, they don't look as bad as the other night, but may get severe.......

Check your radar asap!

yeah, I was looking at those...  Not sure if they will hold together, but if they do, look for them to be 2-3 hours later than the friday storms.  I was hit at about 10:20pm Friday, so my guess is 1am.  Toured the farm today, but didn't see any damage.  Amazing.


Doubt they make it this time. Don't think we have the CAPE like Friday.

You rang?

im upset you got an ipad and didnt buy it from me lol

Storms are breaking up, big cell died in the mountains to my west, thank you god.

Sandyville WV area, still has no power, Cell towers have been running out of fuel as well, cell service area is extremely spotty, places where i'd normally get service at i cannot get any now. I went to a friends house in Nelsonville OH, which does have power, which is how i'm typing this post. But my parents still in sandyville are still without power and may be until the end of the week.

Didn't know you sold them. Plus it was pretty much a spur of the moment decision. I was in NewOrleans back in March for a lil vacation. Meet up with a husband&wife couple that are friend that live in Pittsburg. He does software programming for Apple. He had his company gen3 and was using TomTom as a car gps. It was really slick.I played with it for a couple days and then said, Hey when I get home I gotta get me 1of these. A few mins later he asked if I was serious and I said Yeah.

He took me to a local Apple store and I got a sweet discount as a friend and family thing.

Now on day 2 w/o commercial power. Burned thru ~7 gallons of gas today. I'm running my fridge&freezer, a fan, my a/v receiver and an XM sat receiver. Plus power to charge my iPad and an led light.This afternoon I found that the old couple next door didn't get the genny they thought they were going to. So I sent him to Lowe's for 100ft of #12 extension cord. Added a 50ft I had to get power to their freezer. I loaned them a 3 prong short extension and told them they could hook up a fan if they wanted.

Had to come to work so I dug out the Coleman stove this afternoon so I could heat water for a "bath".

I had already scheduled an electrician friend of a friend to come out Monday(today now) to add abreaker panel and a 220v 30amp socket on the outside of my house. I sure hope he comes out as scheduled. I should be able to run the hot water heater, especially if I disconnect the fridge/freezer for a couple hrs.

Othherwise I'm headin to Bubbles & Hard_Rocks for a shower tonight :)

We just got Cable & internet back today. We never lost power , thank GOD. I know it would have ben miserable without AC!!!

I was without power for about 24 hours, then lost it again briefly this evening, but overall not too bad. We'd been planning on having a party on Saturday night, so we had a large cooler with ice before shit really went down, so we were in good shape. Talking with the neighbors (we bought this house two months ago, first real storm), it turns out that because of the aboveground power lines we tend to lose power fairly often and it's normally out for potentially several days.

Time to hit up the Survival forum and look for generator tips.

Day 3 no power, had about 1minute tonight to tease me. Insert multiple nasty dirty swear words here. Now on day 13 of 19 @ work. I can't sleep worth a Damn in this heat! I'm running my genny about 12hrs a day to keep my freezer & a neighbors cold.

We lost power at 9:30 pm on Fri, and we still don't have it back.  I'm posting from work.

We have a generator so the contents of the refrigerator and chest freezer are fine.  Had some big limbs come down but no trees, and there may be some damage to one small area of the roof.

FedEx dropped a package and left the lovely intel that some of us won't get power back until Sunday, more severe storms are expected on 7/4, and high temps on Sat-Sun are expected to be in the triple digits.

If you have a generator lock it down and guard it; lots of folks buying new ones at Lowes over the weekend had them running until they grew legs and walked away overnight.

B.A.MoFo chain and 2 same quality padlocks on the chain. Genny then secured inside for the night. I'm carrying all the time I'm home.

There are 2things in our favor Bubbles, we still have city water & can resupply gasoline.

Baths are via a pot of water heated on the Coleman stove.

iPad with 4g rocks. If u can afford to, get 1.

Get some 2 liter water bottles, fill them with water, and store them in your car parked in the sun all day.  You can have a nice bath in the evening.

Until a few years ago, I didn't know there was any other way

Then again, I've never spent much time near a city.  I think I'm allergic to them.



I priced a 30kw genny today with switchgear...  I can get a deal for less than $10k delivered.

But then I would also have to install a propane tank to run the thing

Nice, I like that idea, but then what do I do with the Coleman? J/K, I'll stick to the Coleman for now, but if things got to where gas is gone I now know what to do.

Day 5 and still no F'ing power. &$)(;:/-;()$&@@@. Had to cancel BBQ. Nice old neighbor bought 6gallons of gas yesterday. I'm powering his house too. I told him that he needs to buy his own genny, mine will be wired into a sub panel next week or 2. IF my electrician can get the parts.

This will be day 14 in a row at work. God knows I like the $$$, but this is getting old. New job, boss wants 24x7x365, he'll probably get x364. Although I have worked Christmas eve, gone home and celebrated, slept some and gone back Christmas night many times. Will probably do so again. I do like my toys. Holiday & OT pay don't seem to be an issue in this job.

My power finally came back on last night. What I missed most was a fan, warm water, and a cold beverage from the fridge. It was good training I thought.

They are still fixing power lines around here.  Took a short ride to my sister's house to pick up my spare genny she had borrowed.  We passed power crews from Miss., Alabama and Pennsyltucky in the space of about 10 miles.  

Those guys are working their asses off in this heat.  

For what it's worth, my spare generator is a 5k running watt coleman which worked fine for my small house.  We just bought the big portable generac (8k running) that Lowes keeps in stock.  That thing is a monster.  I can highly recommend it to yall.  

I'm a gs-2210-14 senior IT specialist, work for the Feds 37 years now.

When I got home Thursday morning power was back on. About 0400 I'm told. It was a blessed relief. Even the cats were happy. I'm now looking for a window AC unit to fit my front windows.