Saturday, January 23, 2016

5048-b So far so good, I guess

Saturday, January 23, 2016, 8:30 pm

From an email just received:
Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) has restored service to more than 71,000 customers who lost power as a result of the massive snow storm and high winds moving through the state. Currently, 16,000 customers are without power, the majority of which are in Monmouth and Ocean counties.

I'm in Monmouth county, but haven't lost power.  Yet.  Ocean county is the next county south.

I am a tiny bit worried, though, because back after Hurricane Sandy we were without power for like 10 days, even though all areas around us had power, because it turns out our substation is just off the beach, in just about the lowest spot in the neighborhood, and it flooded.  According to the email, low lying areas are flooding now (in a snowstorm?  Yeah, wind on the bay).  

The beach is a particularly unprotected area.

Mother is not happy.

But at least the snow seems to have tapered off.  Now it's just blowing around.

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I watched a truck on our street a few hours ago.  It was an unmarked white large pickup, with a flashing yellow light on top, and a plow on the front.  He was coming down the street and slid, and spun around until the truck was at a right angle to the street.  Now, this street is a narrow, dead end street.  It's so narrow that if there's a car parked at the curb (given that most houses don't have driveways or garages, the street is usually lined with cars -- during snowstorms cars aren't allowed to park on the street, so most people park on their lawns), anyway, it's so narrow that two cars can't pass a parked car, one has to pull over and let the other by.  No way you can make a K turn on this street.  This truck was so big, it was sitting there stretching from curb to curb across the street -- and the street hadn't been plowed yet.  

So he started going back and forth, in the foot or so he had available between curbs, turning a tiny bit each time, trying to turn the truck back straight, which was working for a little while (wheels spinning like mad each time), until, funniest thing, his right front wheel and left rear wheel were both up against the curb and he couldn't move at all (the diagonal being longer than the front-to-back length of the truck).  

That was weird.

It was beginning to look like it would take a crane to get it out of there.

Then, as he was spinning wheels trying to climb a curb a little or something, the rear happened slip to to the side, spinning a wheel onto the grate of the storm drain, which was especially slippery, and that spun him around so fast he almost ended up across the road again, facing the other direction.

He pulled out of there fast, and headed back up the street, and never looked back.

Wherever he was headed with that plow (maybe to the township access road down to the storm wall, and the substation) never did get plowed.  

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It's 9:30 Sunday morning.  We didn't lose power, and Tim has cleared my driveway.  Total was about 15 inches (for me, anyway.  Due to drifting, some people got more or less). 

My back is still biting me.
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