Yesterday Lawn Mowers, Today Snowblowers

Yep, we, once again, got winter in less than 24 hours. Everything turned to crap outside around 10:00 last night and the entire world turned white. K is out snowblowing right now--when he got home this morning, he couldn't even make it into the driveway. He managed to get the truck off of the road and had to leave it. But, then, this isn't all that unusual for those of us living by the big lake.

Now, the snow that came is that wet, heavy stuff. The temp didn't go down all that much--actually, it still is about 33 degrees out there. This, of course, caused all kinds of nasty problems.

First, a little background. K works at a power plant in our city--for a company that doesn't supply the power for this city. (It's complicated and not that interesting.) Suffice it to say, MOST of the time if something happens where he works, it doesn't affect us, and if something happens at the city power plant, it doesn't affect anyone but this city. (Not very clear, but it'll do.) Well, last night was one of those rare occasions when we WERE affected. Anyway, around 12:45 AM, the heavy snow broke a static line at K's plant. This in turn touched one of the power lines. Then all hell broke loose. I guess it looked like a lightning storm with all the flashing, etc. And I guess it was pretty loud at the same time. (Thankfully, no one was hurt during this.) When all this happened, the power went out all over the city. And I was left in the dark, by myself, for (what I thought was going to be) the entire night. Now, being without power in the summer brings a whole set of problems, but not having power during the winter is another story. My first concern was heat--obviously, without power there was none. Just KNOWING the furnace wasn't working made me cold--and the temp didn't really go down more than a degree or two the whole while the power was off! Talk about mind over matter! Then, because I wasn't tired, I couldn't figure out what I could do. I found a radio that works on batteries so that I could have some noise going on. Then I found my little book light so that I could read till I got tired. Before I got a chance to go to bed, the power came back on and all was well. The lights were out for less than two hours.

All in all, things could have been a lot worse. If the temp doesn't go down a lot today, we could lose a lot of the snow that is on the ground. I just hope this isn't a (bad) sign as to how things will go this winter. Yuck!