They'd been telling us for days this storm system was serious, but I don't think even they knew just how bad it would end up being. There being a global pandemic going on concurrently only complicated things.
Safe rooms around the area were going to be opened, but how do you maintain your social distancing in one? Someone asked the question on Weatherman Matt's Facebook page, and his response was perfect.
"Your main goal is to live through Sunday." He then offered some advice for immune compromised people, and anyone else who was concerned, but reiterated that the #1 goal was to make it to Monday. Unfortunately, when all was said and done 14 people didn't. Make it to Monday.
My church had been planning one of those drive in services, but wisely decided to cancel it due to the threat of severe weather. We had service streaming on Facebook Live. About halfway through, the rain started. Though the worst of it passed to the south of where I live, we did get some pretty serious thunder.
FYI, if your radar image looks like a Tide Pod, you've got a tornado on the ground.
This one ended up being a high end EF-4, long track tornado. It set a state record for being 2 1/4 miles wide, and was on the ground for 68 miles. Incredible destruction. Devastating loss of life. It was well to the South of me, along with the other tornadoes that touched down.
After a few hairy hours, things eventually settled down, and I went on to bed. Along about 10:00, the electricity went out. Shortly after, I heard wind. Strong, powerful, noisy wind. Somewhere in the wind, I heard a tree falling.
Do you have any idea what a terrifying sound that is? To hear a tree falling in the darkness, and not know where it is, or if it's going to hit your house or not? If it's going to hit you?
I ran to the window and tried to see what was going on, but it was pitch black outside. I'd grabbed the flashlight I keep beside the bed, but all I could see was the reflection of the light in the glass. I didn't dare open the door. The wind was still blowing way too hard. I got back into bed, and checked my phone, wondering why I hadn't gotten an alert.
Thirty two weather apps on my phone and not one sent me an alert. (By the way, I keep intending to weed them out and only keep my favorites, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.)
I got onto Facebook to see if any of my storm chaser pages had posted, and this is what I found.
The second squall line had come through, bringing with it 75 MPH straight line winds. After about half an hour, the wind subsided, and I went back to sleep, hoping my lights would be back on by morning.
Alas, it was not to be. When my alarm went off, I was still in the dark. I debated on whether to go to work or not, because I didn't know if the plant would have electricity or not. I decided to get dressed and go, just in case. The plant is pretty close to the house, and if they didn't have lights, I'd just come on home and go back to bed.
I arrived at work to discover they did in fact, have lights. What they didn't have was employees. Out of 12 sub-brazers, only 4 of us showed up. Back in the back, they only had enough to run three lines, and they eventually sent them all home shortly after lunch. I found out later lots of people couldn't even get out of their neighborhoods for all the downed trees.
Across Mississippi, more than 40,000 people were without power Monday morning. My county was particularly hard hit. We have a population of 21,000, and 9,000 had lost electricity.
Monday evening, I still had enough warm water to wash with. I couldn't take a full on shower, but I ran some water in the bottom of the tub and bathed. By Tuesday, it was cold. Cold water spit baths and baby wipes just don't quite cut it.
To make matters worse, the weather turned off cold.
Thank goodness I have a wood stove. I had plenty enough twigs and stuff down to start a fire, and my next door neighbors gave me some wood, so I was warm enough, at least. However, by Tuesday, I began to worry about the stuff in my refrigerator. When I hadn't gotten a message saying my power had been restored by the end of work, I filled my lunch box with ice from the machine at work. I put it into bowls and set my milk, mayonnaise, and cottage cheese into them.
Once that was taken care of, the rest of the week was just a waiting game. What can I do to keep myself occupied with no electricity? No TV. No Internet. I couldn't even play my piano, because it's electronic.
I wrote letters, I read books, I cleaned things that hadn't been cleaned it way too long...It's strange the things you notice, when you have nothing to do...like, what caused this dust free rectangle on my TV stand?
I don't know. I don't even remember anything ever being there.
Finally, the day came...Thursday afternoon, driving home from work, I saw the linesmen and their trucks at The Ol' Corner Store, just about a mile from my house. Soon, I said to myself...soon. Still, I went to bed at my normal time, with no electricity, yet.
I'd left the light switch on in my bathroom, so I'd know when the power came back on, having unplugged everything in case of a surge. It was 10:00 PM when they came on. Instantly, I was awake. I threw off the covers, shouting to no one in particular, "I've got lights!"
While I was waiting for the water to heat up, I checked my freezers. My deep freeze was OK. The only things that had thawed were the snakes' rats and mice, and my boudain. Everything underneath was still frozen solid. In my small freezer, everything was thawed, but still cold. I threw a few things out, including a 4 year old pork chop I'd forgotten I had, and some tilapia that was so old I don't even remember buying it.
Most of my meat, I moved to the refrigerator. It should be good still for a while. The good news is, because of the pandemic, I didn't have a whole lot left in that freezer anyway, so there wasn't much to ruin.
What gets to me is all the people on the local groups on FB talking about throwing all their food out, and they got lights back in a day. People! Your food isn't going to ruin in just one day! How wasteful can you be?
Finally, the water was warm, and I put my stinking self into a hot shower. I didn't even care that it was the middle of the night. Clean never felt so good!
So, how was your week?
1 comment:
Glad you came through the storms okay. People have no common sense anymore, we lost power one time in the dead of winter with high temps that never got over 35*. People emptied freezers and fridges into the trash and cried over losing all that food. We put our frozen stuff into a couple of laundry baskets on the front porch and refrigerated stuff went into a cooler. Made it through fine and they didn't even get embarrassed when they realized what fools they had been.
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