So last Sunday night was what is now the worst storm in recent Maine history, power outage-wise. At the height of things, there were half a million power outages in the state, which is more than in the Ice Storm of 1998, which was the gold standard of crazy storms.
We were fortunate, and did not lose our power. On Monday morning when I got up, the rain had pretty much stopped, and since I sleep with ear plugs (BF snores), I missed the wind. So I felt like I was in bizarro land watching all the school closing flash over the morning news. And then I drove to work. The side streets were so coated in sticks and and leaves, I felt like I was off-roading. And when I got to the bridge on Congress Street over the Stroudwater, there was a firetruck hanging out there, because it was about ten minutes after high tide, and the water was just about level with the bridge. At work, most of the people that did make it in had no power at home.
When I got home, I was greeted by the above picture, which is the next street over. That didn’t come down until Friday, which is when a stretch of houses finally got power. What makes that notable is that the large brick building you can kind of see in the background is the water district headquarters. Because we’re on that grid, as long a tree doesn’t snap the wire in front of your house, we get power back very quickly.
Power was filtering back on for my coworkers throughout the week. Everyone I work with regularly had it back by Friday. I know CMP wanted everyone’s power back by Saturday – they just may have been able to make it.
In making lemonade out of lemons news, I had been wanting to do some different trellis systems at the community garden plot next year. The above is what I got out of my backyard – I have plenty of raw materials now.