At least you don't have to replace the mailbox........Fun weekend. Took me almost 3 hours to get home Friday during the storm, and had to plow through over a foot of snow the snow plows had created at the entrance to our driveway. Snow drifts, downed trees and power lines made driving treacherous. Many cars slid off the road and were abandoned in farm fields. Hoped to get home with an hour of daylight to get the generator going because I knew with my luck I’d have trouble. Didn’t work out as planned. My father-in-law was at our house as we’re having two bathrooms tiled. He called the wife about 11am and said he was heading home because it was the end of the world at our place on the mountain. Wife left work about noon and got home about 12:30 just in time to the power to go out. The tile crew were thankful for the power outage so they could get the hell out of Dodge, also. Of course when I finally got home I couldn’t get the generator working and couldn’t work on it in the dark with 60mph winds. Thankfully we had the fireplace to heat the main level of the house. Let me tell you.. The 19th century sucks! 6:30 am Saturday I head out in the daylight to work on the generator. Had to drain the gas, get the bad gas out of the motor and replace the spark plug, which meant I had to disconnect the fuel tank to get to it. Took about an hour but fired it up and hooked it up to the breaker box, which meant I could selectively get power to several areas in the house. Generator was not powerful enough to run the heat pump or the hot water heater, but most everything else had power. Most important was the well pump, the water pump to force water up through the house, some lights and the power to refrigerators. Went out and took stock of the damage. We lost a 30 foot tree that was ripped out by the roots. We also lost a vertical support and railing for the entrance to the house (Still don’t know if there is any structural damage), and some gutters were bent up. The roof looks okay for the most part, but there appears to be some damage to a part of it over the garage. Got back power late Saturday because we are tied into the same grid as the elementary school down the road and because of the school our area is a priority as they can’t let the water pipes freeze. Some people in our area won’t get power back until Wednesday... Just in time for another nor’easter to hit that is forecast to dump another foot of snow on us. But some good news... the mailbox is still standing.
Seriously though, glad y'all are all okay, and that the tree didn't do a lot of damage.
