At noon on Jan. 26, the rain and sleet began. They continued until the evening of the 27th. We accumulated 1.6 inches of precipitation which means the ice built up over everything.
By Jan. 27th, as frequently as every five to ten minutes we heard the crack of large branches breaking from their trees followed by the tinkling of the ice shattering as the branch landed.
In some places, whole trees feel and over a thousand power poles broke or otherwise needed to be replaced. Our pole simply bent under the weight.
The power lines on one side bowed until they touched the ground. Further down in the other direction, they touched the ground and one line broke.
The whole northern half of Arkansas lost electricity, as well as areas in OK, southern MO, KY, TN and other states. Since such a massive area was involved, recovery has been a slow, steady process. Power-company crews and tree-trimming crews have come in from all over the nation to help out, for which we are very thankful.
How We Did
We lost electricity at 10:20 AM on Jan. 27th and finally regained it a week later at 4:50 PM on Feb. 3. Now, nearly two weeks later, the majority of outages in our area have been restored though there are several hundred people locally still without power.
Many people around here bought generators to run their furnace, refrigerators, and freezers for a few hours--and to sometimes run their computers and a few lights.
Our house is super-insulated and has both passive and active solar heating, so we decided not to buy a generator. (Generators cost about $900 and supplies quickly disappeared even though new shipments arrived each day.)
So, we had no source of electricity for 7 days and 5.5 hours. Because of the house's good insulation and due to the heat stored in the thermal mass of the floors, we never dropped below 60 degrees during this time. Once it hit 60F at night, it just stayed there.
If the sun shone during the day, the sunlight heated the house. Since our house is also super-tight, we had to open the windows a crack on the sunny days to help get some fresh air inside. (The ERV, which normally brings in fresh air, needs electricity to operate.) This meant the house didn't heat as much as it could have. On the cloudy days, we kept most of the windows covered with the blinds and thermal drapes to help hold in the warmth.
The interior temp. at the moment the power went off was 73.
Jan. 27, cloudy
Indoor High: 73F Low: 60F
Outdoor High: 31F Low: 21F
Jan. 28, sunny
Indoor High: 72F Low: 60F
Outdoor High: 29F Low: 14F
Jan. 29, partly cloudy
Indoor High: 70F Low: 62F
Outdoor High: 35F Low: 24F
Jan. 30, mostly cloudy
Indoor High: 64F Low: 60F
Outdoor High: 42F Low: 24F
Jan. 31, sunny
Indoor High: 67F Low: 63F
Outdoor High: 54F Low: 26F
Feb. 1, sunny
Indoor High: 68F Low: 64F
Outdoor High: 52F Low: 36F
Feb. 2, partly cloudy
Indoor High: 68F Low: 62F
Outdoor High: 44F Low: 20F
Feb. 3, partly cloudy
Indoor High (before power came on): 66F
Outdoor High: 34F
Of course, we use electricity for other things than heating. After 24 hours, the refrigerator no longer kept the food cold. We took ice from the plenteous outdoor supply and placed it in a container in the refrigerator to help keep the food cold. The freezer began to thaw after 48 hours. A neighbor who had a generator and a half-empty freezer offered to let us use his extra freezer room, and we took him up on it. We also ate a lot of previously-frozen food those first few days.
We moved the food that only needed refrigeration into our newly-completed garage where the temperture was maintaining at just above 32F. We put ice in our two ice boxes, and the food kept plenty cold.
My old house, which we still own, is the next house down the road, and it has propane heating for the water, stove, and fireplace (as well as the furnace, which didn't work without electricity). We cooked one hot meal a day on the propane stove. We were able to keep that house warm enough that the water pipes didn't freeze--though we also left two faucets dripping at night.
On Thursday, Jan. 29, we were losing our water. Water was starting to dribble from the faucet instead of gush. We filled a number of gallon jugs of water just in case we were going to lose water all together. Much to our relief, on Friday morning, the pressure was back and stayed strong from then on. We think someone got a generator connected to the pump on the nearby water tower until power could be restored.
Since we have an active solar water heater, we had enough hot water for one shower a day on the sunny days. That was very nice. We also heard that some people lost their phone connections during the storm, but our lines are underground and were not affected.
While our house was designed to maximize the use of natural lighting, we still had to use flashlights to move about and read after the sun went down. By 8:30 PM on most nights, we were having trouble staying awake and gratefully crawled into our warm beds. We didn't get up out of bed until daybreak at about 6:45 AM.
So we didn't suffer (thank God!), but I sure do like electricity. How could I blog without it? ;)
