What safety precautions should residents take during snowmelt season?

[Borek]

Rome is being washed away.

Link is broken.

 

[wolram]

England, wet and cold. frosty and wet, overcast and wet, sunny and wet, i guess i could make a mud man.

 

[Borek]

http://www1.iwvisp.com/tronagemclub/LasrYearShow.htm

 

[Art]

England, wet and cold. frosty and wet, overcast and wet, sunny and wet, i guess i could make a mud man.

It was freezing when I was in the UK a few weeks ago. Thick frost every morning and a lot of places had snow brrrrrrr... Reminded me of why I left.

 

[epenguin]

Link is broken.

Everything is.

 

[epenguin]

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE4BB2J720081212

Is this OK? Could you see the pic in the earlier post?

 

[mgb_phys]

Yes finally snow - about 1cm, just another couple of m and I can go skiing!

 

[turbo]

I must ask, but what is this "snow" that you all speak of? I have never heard of such a thing!

For someone who travels to the mountains to ski every winter, you sure have a short memory.

 

[turbo]

I just got back inside a while ago, after shoveling and scooping several inches of saturated snow (slush!) in the rain. I'd rather get a foot of real snow that I can move with a snow-blower. Shoveling gets old real fast when every load weighs 20-30#.

 

[Math Jeans]

For someone who travels to the mountains to ski every winter, you sure have a short memory.

Wow...I can't believe you actually remember me saying that. You have a nice memory.

My point is that in my area, if we get a centimeter of snow on the top of a mountain within a 300 mile radius, it is a top news story.

 

[Borek]

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE4BB2J720081212

Is this OK? Could you see the pic in the earlier post?

OK now, I have seen picture earlier.

 

[Borek]

Wow...I can't believe you actually remember me saying that. You have a nice memory.

Bevare, collective memory of PFers knows no borders.

 

[Danger]

Here, we keep beer in the refrigerator to keep it from freezing.

Really?

Close. We have our thermostat set to about 15°C most of the time. The apartment tends to retain a lot of body heat.

 

[Astronuc]

We had freezing rain and flooding in our area. Some branches branches broke and fell, and I saw one tree in our neighborhood that fell over. But we didn't get it as bad as areas north and east of us, or higher elevations. There were about 35,000 - 50,000 people briefly without power.

But - Northeast struggles after storm blacks out 1.25M
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081213/ap_on_re_us/ice_storm

CONCORD, N.H. – Utility crews worked through a night of hand-numbing cold in the Northeast but they still had a long way to go before restoring power to all of the more than 1 million homes and businesses blacked out by a huge ice storm.

In New Hampshire, where more than 370,000 customers still had no electricity Saturday, Gov. John Lynch urged residents still without power to make overnight plans early.

"I think there were a lot of people who decided to just stick it out and stay home last night hoping that power would be restored today, but I think people have to assume that power will not come back today and seek shelter," Lynch said.

Utilities say it will be days before all service is restored.

Temperatures dipped into the teens Friday night and early Saturday in northern New England, forcing many people out of their homes and into shelters.

About 60 people spent the night at the Rochester, N.H., Middle School, including Debbie Reed, 57, who left her apartment Friday afternoon when she started seeing her breath.

"I still don't have power. I can't shower, I can't cook, I can't do much of anything," she said. "My plan is to go home and see how long I can stand it. If the power isn't back on by tonight I'll come back here. It's so cold I can only stand it for so long."

The ice storm compared with some of the Northeast's worst, especially in New Hampshire, where more than half the state — 400,000-plus homes and businesses — was without power at the peak of the outage. Far fewer customers were affected by the infamous Ice Storm of '98, when some residents spent more than a week in the dark. New Hampshire opened at least 25 shelters.

People lost power as far south as Pennsylvania, but most of the outages were in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine and New York.
. . . .

 

[scorpa]

Ah it was -25 here today with the windchill making it -39 which I can believe after having spent the morning running around outside. Bit of a shock to the system when you get that for the first time every year. Yesterday was so nice though, only -15 or so so I went snowboarding.

 

[turbo]

In '98, my neighborhood was without power for days, and I talked to a representative of the power company and asked her to send a guy with a pickup truck and a hot-stick to close the open safety. I had already visually inspected all the lines, and there were no more sagging-branch shorts. She said that she had to let the dispatchers concentrate on their priorities, and I told her that I knew a retired lineman with a hot-stick in his garage, and I'd close the safety myself. A little over an hour later, we had power. That night, with the house warming up, the thick layer of ice on the metal roof let go and destroyed my fireplace/chimney while sliding off with a roar. The next morning, the ice on the front side of the roof let go, ripping off the chimney to our wood stove. That storm was NOT fun. Try to get masons to come rebuild a fireplace/chimney in nasty winter weather, when many dozens of other folks have suffered similar fates...

 

[franznietzsche]

In '98, my neighborhood was without power for days, and I talked to a representative of the power company and asked her to send a guy with a pickup truck and a hot-stick to close the open safety. I had already visually inspected all the lines, and there were no more sagging-branch shorts. She said that she had to let the dispatchers concentrate on their priorities, and I told her that I knew a retired lineman with a hot-stick in his garage, and I'd close the safety myself. A little over an hour later, we had power. That night, with the house warming up, the thick layer of ice on the metal roof let go and destroyed my fireplace/chimney while sliding off with a roar. The next morning, the ice on the front side of the roof let go, ripping off the chimney to our wood stove. That storm was NOT fun. Try to get masons to come rebuild a fireplace/chimney in nasty winter weather, when many dozens of other folks have suffered similar fates...

Jeebus Cristo! And here four inches of rain in a day is considered bad weather.

 

[turbo]

Jeebus Cristo! And here four inches of rain in a day is considered bad weather.

Not fun, for sure. We are still suffering damage from that storm. Storm-damaged trees across many hundreds of thousands of acres have provided unprotected access to insect pests, and the bugs are out-of-control. The real loss to Maine's timber industry will never been known.

 

[Borek]

Turbo disappeared about 16 hours ago, I wonder if he is not cut from electricity and the net, from what they said here on TV parts of Maine were severly affected by the ice storm.

But http://www3.cmpco.com/outage/ doesn't list his area as affected.

 

[Andre]

Turbo disappeared about 16 hours ago, I wonder if he is not cut from electricity and the net, from what they said here on TV parts of Maine were severly affected by the ice storm.

But http://www3.cmpco.com/outage/ doesn't list his area as affected.

Hang in there, Turbo.

Actually Borek electricity transport to a lonely mansion above the ground is rather vulnerable for storm and icings out there. Very well possible that he lost power individually, while the rest of the area is unaffected.

 

[binzing]

We woke up to a little snow on Saturday, and may get more.

 

[turbo]

Sorry - I have been spending a LOT of time with my lawyers preparing for trial (starting tomorrow).

We often lose power out here in the boonies, but last spring/summer the power company went on an aggressive limb-trimming campaign and that seems to have reduced the number of tree-branch shorts considerably.

 

[SticksandStones]

We have a blizzard warning in effect today.

Right now it's -16C with a windchill of -28C. 10 hours ago it was above freezing!

I have a nice 8 hour drive on Thursday, and the signs are showing no snow for that day and it can stay like that!

 

[lisab]

Sorry - I have been spending a LOT of time with my lawyers preparing for trial (starting tomorrow).

We often lose power out here in the boonies, but last spring/summer the power company went on an aggressive limb-trimming campaign and that seems to have reduced the number of tree-branch shorts considerably.

Good luck at trial, turbo!

 

[LightbulbSun]

I was in the dark for 60 hours. I didn't get power back until yesterday around 3PM. It was really bad here. You could hear tree limbs falling and you could see white flashes that looked like lightning in the sky from all the transformers blowing out. When our power went out you could hear a "pop."

A lot of the ice has already melted from the warm temperatures yesterday. All you can hear outside is the ice crashing to the surface. One of the worse ice storms I've endured.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Good luck at trial, turbo!

Yes, good luck, Turbo.

 

[Evo]

I was in the dark for 60 hours. I didn't get power back until yesterday around 3PM. It was really bad here. You could hear tree limbs falling and you could see white flashes that looked like lightning in the sky from all the transformers blowing out. When our power went out you could hear a "pop."

A lot of the ice has already melted from the warm temperatures yesterday. All you can hear outside is the ice crashing to the surface. One of the worse ice storms I've endured.

I do not wish to go through anotherof those, almost 2 weeks without power. Since then, the power company has kept a very aggressive tree pruning policy.

 

[Borek]

Sorry - I have been spending a LOT of time with my lawyers preparing for trial (starting tomorrow).

No idea what is going on - but good luck as well!

 

[turbo]

Good luck at trial, turbo!

Thanks, lisab! My lawyers are working on a contingent-fee-basis so if I don't win, they don't get paid. It's a pretty clear-cut wrongful-termination case under the ADA, so I have to trust in their skill and experience. It helps my confidence that the lead lawyer in my case is the president of the Maine Employment Lawyers Association and has won the largest employment law damage award in the history of the state.

It's pretty grueling preparing for trial, getting cross-examined in mock trials, etc (and having to live through that crap over and over again in my mind), but it's coming to a close.

 

[turbo]

Yes, good luck, Turbo.

Thanks, Fi! My former boss counter-sued claiming that I severely damaged his company by steering a potential client to a competitor. I did no such thing, nor have they any evidence (message pads, emails, computer records, emails, etc) to support that made-up claim. They dropped that today - the day before trial begins - it would have made them look quite desperate and dishonest to float that claim.

 

[hypatia]

We are really getting socked hard this morning, this is the worse Fall snow I can recall. about 7 inches on the ground{2 per hour}, due to stop around 2 pm. On the up side, I HAVE A SNOW DAY !

 

[Borek]

Still nothing here. But I have this picture taken in March.

 

[George Jones]

I just looked at my local weather forcast. For Sunday, it says "A few flurries ... close to 15 cm"

15 cm is 6 inches.

 

[LightbulbSun]

Starting to snow here. Visibility is quickly dropping. This is going to be one fun event. Lots of moisture for this storm to strengthen.

I heard reports out of Buffalo that there experiencing blizzard conditions. Visibility pretty much at zero.

 

[LightbulbSun]

In a matter of 40 minutes, we almost have a half inch of accumulation, and this is not the heaviest part of the storm!