They were predicting a blizzard Sunday night but we didn’t believe them.
And then it started snowing thick, wet heavy snow.
And then the kids went to bed.
And then school was cancelled Sunday evening.
And then Tom got the call he had a late start.
And then the power flicked off and on about four times over an hour.
And then it went off for good about midnight. Hoo boy.
Katie woke up during one of the brief outages because the backup power supplies were beeping and we were running around trying to turn things off… So we told her there was no school and she could sleep in…and that daddy would be here in the morning.
The power was still off in the morning so Tom built a fire in the fireplace and it did a decent job of keeping the living room comfortable (70°). Unfortunately the fireplace is meant for looks and not heating so the flue doesn’t really work so the fire burns fast and hot and we went through wood like crazy (thankfully we had lots of wood from the free stuff I got this summer). We assumed that everyone was without power, but all our friends had power. Turns out, there were about 250,000 people in the greater metro area that lost power!
I hadn’t seen snow this heavy and wet in a long time—these bushes are normally chest-high and completely away from the sidewalk. This morning? About knee-high and covering most of the sidewalk!
The kids played outside most of the day with friends…moving from yard to yard and house to house. They had to dry their snow gear in front of the fire.
Katie kept trying to use things that needed electricity and wondering why they didn’t work. I cooked on the gas stove. As time wore on, we eventually brought out a cooler to put some of the refrigerator stuff in outside since it was getting warm. (It was freezing outside so the stuff would be just right in a cooler.) The freezers were okay because we hadn’t opened them.
The day wasn’t too bad while it was light out—there was lots of animal cuddling warmth—
but then once it got dark (at 4pm!) we had to go pull out all our candles!
We kept checking our power status on the website and this is the only thing we saw all day:
It was frustrating. But I was glad I was still able to use my phone and stay connected. (Using Low Power Mode and turning the Brightness way down reaaaaally conserves battery life. Plus I used one of our external battery packs.)
You know the animals are desperate for attention (or warmth) when they cuddle together on me. Usually it’s one or the other because one kicks the other one out.
At bedtime it was a chilly 52° upstairs so we got out lots of extra blankets and sent the kids to bed a little early. A friend invited us to her house the following day if the power didn’t come back on. Just as we were getting into bed under our six layers (and me in top and bottom long johns, pants, and a hoodie—complete with the hood up!) the power came back on about 9:30! So we had a mad dash throughout the house to make sure everything was turned off (somehow both of Owen’s bedroom lights were on?!) and the furnace turned on. It had been about 22 hours without power.
I don’t think we’ve ever been without power for that long…and we lived through 25 years of Michigan winters and a few hurricane systems in North Carolina. I don’t want to do it again.