Weather....

[Autumn Daze]

It seem we along the coast did better than my family in southern Vermont. Torrential rain with almost no wind created flash floods of epic proportions. Many bridges gone,two dams broke. The town of Willmington is half gone down the river along with the towns of Marlboro and South Newfane. My brothers road is gone and it will be about 3 weeks before he can get out. RT 100 has houses parked on it. It's a mess and came without warning. Funny the media doesn't talk about this.

[Dean Romig]

Originally Posted by Kevin McCormack

"Despite widespread damage on the ground, there does not appear to be any threat of a tsunami at this time."

[Opening Day]

Cause it's not NEW YORK CITY.....dummy....! On Sunday I did see a quick mention about VT and then we went back Live to NYC for something much more important shot of Broadway with no one walking around...... That's my comments from the peanut gallery..

[Kevin McCormack]

Mark, my son now lives right around you in VA Beach (Baltic Ave.). His fiance is a trauma unit physician over at the Chesapeake Medical Center in Chesapeake VA and had 24/7 duty from Friday 6pm through Sunday noon. Brendan very wisely snagged a motel room early Wed. over near the hospital so he could see her on breaks durin the storm. Worked out great, but they have not been back over to see if their place in VA Beach had any damage (they are up about 5 floors overlooking the main drag to the ocean). They had plenty of emergency supplies, but I'll check with him about the pine cones.

[Blind Dog]

Looks like JD escaped the dance; the site has been up and running without fail.

Thanks JD

[John D.]

Originally Posted by Fred Preston

Looks like JD escaped the dance; the site has been up and running without fail.

Thanks JD

Hi Fred,

Many thanks... I did back all my servers thinking there was a good chance that either the 100 foot spruce or the huge maple would fall on the garage (my office is above the garage, where all this runs from), but, it wasn't to be.. Usually Jen & I lose power at the slightest hint of high winds or heavy rains...??

Anyway, my thanks! No one was more astonished then we were...

John

[Bindlestiff]

I sure was wrong on my assessment of this storm. The cable TV weather reports had me in line for a direct hit and painted my expected experience as life altering. Well, I had heavy rain and strong blustery wind, but not the hurricane they predicted. Not even close and I was suppose to be at the center of its path as it came through New England. It actually went a bit West of me.

Today, on my ride to work I saw how lucky I was. Yesterday on the TV all I saw was wet empty streets in NYC, I assumed that they were obvious reporting with the absolute worst backdrop they could find, even it wasn't representative of general conditions for the drama. But today, I see trees down everywhere, roads closed and homes damaged and now I finally learn that towns in Vermont are under water.

I guess I was very lucky at my home to not experience any of the nasty parts of this storm. I never expected to see this much damage from the storm that passed over my house (it seemed mild) and I was reported to be in the center of it all! What a difference a few miles can make

[J.B. Books]

Well I survived the not so BIG blow named Irene. At 1PM Sunday my power went out and it was finally restored in the last hour. It is clear the Public Service Company of NH's maintenance of the power grid is sub par. 2 1/4" of rain and the highest gust recorded was 45mph. No power 29 hours. What would we have done if it was a real storm!

[Double Play]

Originally Posted by Pete Lester

No power 29 hours. What would we have done if it was a real storm!

Pete,
We lost power at 4:00am Sunday and best guess is with half a million homes still without power it's going to be a while. There are crews here from Alabama and Georgia, I can't imagine what this state would have done if the storm came in as a cat 1 or 2.
Hopefully they have learned a lesson and will start keeping the trees cut back from the power lines. If some of that federal stimulus money was used to improve the power grid instead of lining the pockets of political cronies’ we all would have benefited.
Now we await all that water from Allan’s place to flow down thru the already overflowing Connecticut River. Life is good.

[J.B. Books]

Originally Posted by Larry Frey

Pete,
We lost power at 4:00am Sunday and best guess is with half a million homes still without power it's going to be a while. There are crews here from Alabama and Georgia, I can't imagine what this state would have done if the storm came in as a cat 1 or 2.
Hopefully they have learned a lesson and will start keeping the trees cut back from the power lines. If some of that federal stimulus money was used to improve the power grid instead of lining the pockets of political cronies’ we all would have benefited.
Now we await all that water from Allan’s place to flow down thru the already overflowing Connecticut River. Life is good.

The problem is a bit more complicated in NH. For most of my life we had a single state regulated utility and the state approved the electric rate. We had a well maintained grid. In the late 90's politicians decided to deregulate electrical power and when that was done the major utility no longer had exclusive ownership of the grid, they had to share the grid with competitiors and thus have no monetary incentive to keep it up beyond minimum standards.