Crazy Weather
Well, last Wednesday’s storm and subsequent power failure did a number on my desktop computer here at home. Even though we are on a back-up battery and surge protector and I shut everything down, somehow we still managed to get fried. We replaced the tower and are hoping that the hard drive in the old one is OK. In the mean time, it’s a little frustrating to not have any of my contacts list or any of my bookmarks, especially the ones I use for this site. Slowly but surely all that will be restored. We were lucky though. Our power was only out about 12 hours, unlike some of our neighbors to the south.
Now, apparently yesterday’s excess heat may be the cause of the train derailment in Point of Pocks.
Has this recent bout of extreme weather affected you at all?
In other news, the Frederick News-Post is asking it’s readers to come up with the Seven Wonders of Frederick. What would you put on your list?
I elaborated on what happened to us when driving back from Fredericksburg on saturday night in my blog.
At work on Wednesday, we were swamped with downed tree/wire reports, while our road reporters were dodging falling trees and running for cover from tornadoes.
Yes indeed, I can attest to the recent bout with extreme weather having a major effect on my family and me.
The severe storms and high temperatures over the past week or so coincided with my brother and his family arriving for a week’s visit Friday before last. I hadn’t seen my brother for over 3 years and he’s rarely able to travel “home” to MD from where he now lives in South Georgia, so we had high hopes for the precious few days they’d spend with us. I took an equally rare and precious 6 days off from work to make the most of the time. I talked with my brother and planned activities for their time here, thinking he’d picked a pretty good time of year to come.
The brief but severe storm that raced through Saturday before last, the day after my brother arrived, was perfectly timed to ruin their plans to attend a car race in Hagerstown that evening. The race, which was canceled even though sunny skies soon returned after the rain ended, was rescheduled for this past Saturday. This time, my brother and family merely had to swelter through the day’s extreme heat/humidity to view the rescheduled race. At least they managed to escape a storm similar to the previous Saturday’s that had caused the race to be postponed in the first place. This time, the storm stayed more to the south, squarely affecting those of us in upcounty Montgomery.
Though that storm moved through our area rather uneventfully, I spent the day dreading the prospect of again losing electricity, as we had the previous Thurs. during the truly severe thunderstorm/tornado events that affected the entire area. (My power was out 18 hours Thurs. into Fri. a.m, but I realize we were fortunate compared with others’ experiences.)
Those awful storms on Thurs. and subsequent power outage were particularly ill timed for me and my visiting family. The storm struck suddenly not long after we’d entered the conservatory housing the special butterfly exhibit at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, cutting short our visit to this wonderful place and a rare opportunity to admire and photograph the butterflies. (But, we were thankful and just relieved to have emerged unharmed after it became clear this was no ordinary storm and we overheard staff members’ discussion of being prepared to have us take shelter under tables in a small building adjoining the conservatory.) After spending quite some time holed up in stifling heat of the shed at Brookside Gardens, it appeared we could leave safely and we set out on what turned out to be a 4-hour slog home to Damascus through snarled traffic and debris-laden roadways. The fact that the power was out when we finally reached the house wasn’t exactly a cheery prospect. I tried to be upbeat, but I knew this outage had the potential to last quite some time.
After eating a meal cobbled together as the daylight ebbed, we embarked on a game of cards by candlelight. That is, until several of the cards my niece was holding caught fire when her drinking glass exploded, which had been sitting too close to one of the candles. That brought a swift end to the card game and an early conclusion to the evening when we decided we best throw in the towel and make our way by flashlight to our warm and sticky bedrooms.
The power outage continued long enough into Friday to wreck the plans my brother and I had made to take a day trip to the Eastern Shore of MD, where we grew up. I was afraid to leave the house not knowing when the power might come on and what additional measures I might need to take to salvage food in the fridge, etc.
I could go on, but you get the picture. While most of our activities were thwarted, we did get time to enjoy each other’s company face to face instead of just being email presences and voices on the phone, which of course is the most important thing.
If I may offer a bit of technical advice…
I’m using Google Browser Sync to constantly keep my bookmarks backed up and synced on my home and work computers. I think it’s also built into the current Google Toolbar, but you’ll have to check for yourself as the toolbar doesn’t yet work with my version of Firefox 3. I’m also managing contacts through gmail, which is easy to set up with your own domain name for free using Google Apps.
I haven’t seen anything in the paper about last night’s (Tuesday) storms. I don’t think the city was too affected, but the southern part of the county had some wicked storms last night and there, as of this morning, were several roads still closed from fallen trees. We had several trees fall on our property as well.