Listen

National Kid has us covered when
the electricity goes out.

I wasn't prepared for the storm. Initial forecasts predicted 2 to 4 inches of snow for my area with 4 to 8 inches south and east. We were straddling the line. Still, the storm wasn't going to be a block buster though a nuisance as it would make the morning commute a mess.

We were up at 5 AM, to listen to no school reports. There were no classes at the college where Himself teaches, but the faculty had a professional day schedule. The professional days are part of their contract so attendance is mandatory. At 5:30 AM, we saw Himself's college scroll by. Hooray, a snow day! I went back to bed.

When I woke u a couple of hours later and looked out the window, it was snowing hard.There was already a good 4 inches of snow on the ground and snow was predicted all day. I wondered if I should fill up the water buckets just in case the electricity went out. Himself didn't think the storm would be bad. Yeah, it probably wouldn't be that bad and I ignored my gut feeling.

Shortly after I finished my cup of tea, the electricty went out. I was able to navigate the National Grid site to report the outage though the site was painfully slow as electrical service in other towns began to fail due to the heavy wet snow. Navigating the Internet on the cellphone was excrutiatingly slow, too, as Verizon service dropped from 4G to my grandma can run faster and she's been dead for 35 years.

I sent a text to Red who live in the next town west and south of me. She still had electricity and she was able to check the National Grid Outage Map. Electricity was expected to be back on by 1:30 PM. Not too bad. We don't have an alternate heat source (i.e. no fireplace or wood stove). The temperature in the house wouldn't drop that quickly. Food in the fridge would be ok, too, and if the electricity was out longer, food could be put on the porch. The only issue was going to be no water to flush the toilet.

I phoned Prissy just to make sure she was ok. She was fine though wished she had had a second cup of coffee. I told her we wouldn't have long to wait before the electricity came back on.

Kudos to National Grid for getting the electricity turned on an hour before the expected time. I heard later the outage was due to a tree limb taking power lines down somewhere on my road.

So, the moral of the story? Listen to your gut feeling. (Or don't listen to Himself (-; ). The weather dudes are talking about two more potential storms for Monday into Tuesday.  After the electricity came on, I had a second cup of tea, flushed the toilet, and filled up some water buckets. Just in case.