Blizzard Thoughts; Climate Lunacy Continues
The Amazing Forecast
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| Harlem |
The National Weather Service and the larger meteorological community deserves a great deal of credit for the advance forecast of the blizzard. It undoubtedly saved lives, mitigated inconvenience (flights canceled in advance rather than stranding people at airports), and decreased property losses.
Still, the best forecast cannot make up for utter, tragic incompetence.
Roughly, 1.5 million people (not "customers") are without power at this time. Local media in the Northeast are estimating it will take up to six days to get all of the lights on. Hopefully, the advance forecast urging people to obtain prescription refills, fill gas tanks, et cetera, was helpful and mitigated the effects of the outages.
Global Warming
On February 5, I ran this piece:
And, we cannot forget this gem:
While on the subject of lunacy, I love visiting NYC. It is so much fun. But, it is sometimes frustrating that New Yorkers, particularly those who are natives, believe the nation stops at the Hudson River and/or everyone is highly affected by what goes on there. That point is illustrated by this headline that ran in the U.S. version of The Sun (ironic) this afternoon:
Prior to the blizzard, my spouse, my kindergartner daughter and I were all coming down with a cold, and my daughter has a doctor's appointment scheduled for tomorrow. I have an important prescription that's had a lot of shortages and I struggled to get it refilled, and it was on track to arrive Monday.
ReplyDeleteThanks to the special efforts made by my doctor and the pharmacists at my local Walmart, they got it to me on Saturday, before the storm.
Power went out Monday morning and we spent a day with all of us sick, with no power, while the blizzard raged. We live where you can't get natural gas lines, so we couldn't cook either. And unlike when I was a kid and we lost power and my parents' old oil furnace never missed a beat...our modern oil furnace auto shuts off if it detects power interruption, and requires electricity to start.
We had not taken the weather forecasts seriously because there had been so many similar forecasts which came to nothing. And then at the last minute this forecast turned extreme, and it was so last minute that we barely even found out about it let alone had time to do anything, and so extreme that it was hard to believe.
After the last-minute insane forecast, we ran from store to store looking for extra under-6 cough syrup for our daughter, all stores were out, then our cell phones went off announcing the travel ban 45 minutes before it went into effect. We considered trying one last store but instead decided to stay home and go back to baking our garden's last pumpkin (it had just started going bad). So we made 2 pies and stuck the rest of the pumpkin in the fridge with plans to make pumpkin soup and pumpkin muffins during the blizzard.
We didn't want to make more than 2 pies because last time we made 2 pies we barely managed to eat them up before they spoiled. But turns out if all you have to eat in the house is pumpkin pie and cheese sandwiches, you *can* eat 2 pies in 2 days! :D
We had considered turning up our heat before the blizzard in case we lost power, but our oil was already lowish so we didn't.
But we did have the remains of previous preparation efforts. We've owned 5 of the rechargeable emergency lights that charge while acting as nightlights. Two broke, our daughter took one to play with and lost it, someone had unplugged one to plug something else in so we plugged it back in before the storm "just in case"; so we had two to actually use. We still have the UCO Candlelier 3-candle lantern that I mentioned on your old blog after Sandy. And we camp, so we also have graniteware mugs and a thin camping kettle. Using those, every 20 minutes one of us got a nice cup of tea--which was really soothing on our sore throats. Also because we camp, we have a nice bright battery powered lantern and a small battery powered "tent light." My homeschooled daughter was able to continue her schoolwork by lantern light.
When we still had no power at bedtime and the house was 55F, we set the faucets dripping and went to bed. Power was back in the morning.
Just shoveled out the dryer vent and the oil tank access. Oil's now to between 1/8 and 1/4 tank, so gotta call the oil man tomorrow.
We've been lucky.