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Just had a severe thunderstorm pass through Ottawa. Looking out the window, I saw rain the intensity of what the news shows during hurricane season.

I am lucky - my home is in a small pocket of "has power" surrounded by larger areas of "no power". It'll be anywhere between 4 and 16 hours before most of the city is back up and running.

And of course it's a three-day holiday weekend. I doubt there'll be much celebrating here this year.

(05-21-2022, 04:53 PM)robkelk Wrote: [ -> ]Just had a severe thunderstorm pass through Ottawa. Looking out the window, I saw rain the intensity of what the news shows during hurricane season.

I am lucky - my home is in a small pocket of "has power" surrounded by larger areas of "no power". It'll be anywhere between 4 and 16 hours before most of the city is back up and running.

And of course it's a three-day holiday weekend. I doubt there'll be much celebrating here this year.

Just wait 9 months. I'd expect a startling and completely unanticipated jump in children being born, and then the celebrations start.

had a strong thunderstorm roll thru Windsor around 9-10am this morning, may have been part of the same system.

Got dark enough streetlights were coming on

Huh. We had severe thunderstorms in New Jersey yesterday afternoon, which seemed to blow up out of the south. I wonder if it was the same storm system.

The outage map just updated - for the worse. There's maybe a half-dozen neighbourhoods that still have power. I'm guessing the power company finally got its sensor network back up.

Bob, we usually get your weather in a reduced form, not in an enhanced form...

Yeah, and we have tree carnage here, because the snow last night was wet and heavy and all the trees were already leafed up. We'll need to call an arborist to come do a trim up and check out of our one tree, as we lost a few branches.

Report from a family member who's out in the mess: Not only are power lines down, power poles are down. Some roads are closed altogether.

We're not going to be cleaned up any time soon.

This has gone past annoyance and into tragedy.

Three dead in Toronto, and three dead in Ottawa.

Photo from the province's power grid maintainer's Twitter feed:



You'd have to ask them how typical this is.

While hardly an expert, I would have to posit the answer is "not fucking very," based on normal repair times alone. It has to take just a leeetle longer to set a new one of those puppies up (and considerably more force in the first place to knock it down) than slapping up a new wooden pole a couple feet from the stump of an old one to be pulled out when the emergency work is done.

(05-21-2022, 04:53 PM)robkelk Wrote: [ -> ]I am lucky - my home is in a small pocket of "has power" surrounded by larger areas of "no power". It'll be anywhere between 4 and 16 hours before most of the city is back up and running.

We wound up wrapping the Mekton game I play in early because of it.  Cant say I blame the others for wanting to protect their electronics from the havok we see happened

(05-21-2022, 04:53 PM)robkelk Wrote: [ -> ]... It'll be anywhere between 4 and 16 hours before most of the city is back up and running. ...

It's been 20 hours since I said that, and nobody who lost power has it back yet.

Good thing tomorrow's a holiday here - nobody's going anywhere. I wonder whether we'll be going back to work on Tuesday.

Photos

Including this one. It appears faith is not sufficient protection.

Faith can move mountains. And steeples.

As an FYI, last week the https://www.blitzortung.org/en/live_lightning_maps.php link was posted in the company slack when thunderstorms came through my and other areas of germany. There is also a nicely zoom/scrollable form at https://map.blitzortung.org/#1/26.6/8

Real-time detection and tracking of lightning strikes by their radio emissions.

Chiming in - if you saw the thread I started, then you know we just got our share of WTF Mother Nature.

The thing about living in South Texas is that we're kinda accustomed to getting storms that will drop tornadoes on a somewhat regular basis. Thus our power grids are made with redundant transmission paths that can kick over into alternate routes in seconds if needs be.

That said, there was that one time while I was living in Washington State when we got what I call the Inauguration Day Wind Storm because it occurred on the day Bill Clinton was inaugurated for his first term in the White House. That day, Western Washington saw a huge storm enter the Puget Sound and surrounding areas with gale force winds strong enough to push down high voltage transmission towers. From what I recall, there were a few people dead from electrocution because they had no idea it had happened due to the visibility being reduced to almost nothing by horizontal rain.

Heh. Of late I've been making the joke that anytime we have high winds around San Pedro, I ask if "That ex president" happened to drop by to check on 'his' golf course