This weekend's storms

[papaof2]

The current storm fronts are giving us three hours of thunderstorms surrounded by 11 hours of showers and rain . 150 miles south of us, they have 14 hours of "strong storms" with "Tornadoes, hail and damaging winds likely". It all depends on where you are because this storm is moving almost directly West->East instead of their usual Northeast track which would have brought those "strong storms" over us for hours instead of just the one hour of "heavy thunderstorms" in our forecast.

Much of Mississippi is under tornado watches. The storm still has a tail in Texas although its head is now off the coast of South Carolina. In the radar images, you'll find lots of red along the entire length of that line so there will be more damage tonight.

[9idrr]

We can only assume you're about the most prepared guy in your County.

[papaof2]

Not as prepared as some of my characters are ;-)

Been reading through some old stories as I listen to the thunder. The TV weather explanation of the muted, rumbling thunder is that it's coming from above the clouds (cloud to cloud lightning).

We've had three bumps on the power, each time just dropping one side of the 240 volt feed (different UPS units complaining, so different 120 volt circuits bumped). Had a couple of seconds in the dark, then one second in the dark, then a flicker then a couple of hours later one more second in the dark. No flashes of light or thunder associated with any of the glitches so more likely to be limbs contacting wires. The co-op is showing zero outages so no significant damage to their facilities. GA Power has one block of 3200 customers out and another block of 2511, all in the southern part of the state where the storm is still in progress.

Nothing happening here since the last glitch - just rain and the muted thunder.

Saw a report of another tornado in Mississippi about 30 miles from the big one last weekend. From the size and intensity of the overall radar picture, there were probably others in Alabama and possibly Florida but haven't seen anything yet (it's 2:30AM as I'm writing this and we just have rain and showers forecast for the next four or five hours).

I think we dodged the bullet again.

[9idrr]

Dodged the bullet, huh? I thought a real wizard would just use that magic wand and deflect those bullets, or catch 'em in that conical hat.

[9idrr]

Our power seems to've gone out about around 0200. Got up around 0500 and started the Yamaha with the idea that the phone message at the power company's number might be close to accurate in that the restoration would be around 0700. Latest word is more like 1700 so I should be good to head to work, as this generator seems to be okay to run close to 12 hours on a tank. I can re-fill it with fresh gas and know I'm good.
Momma'll be glad to have power throughout the day.
Guess the car vs. pole contest shows that even if the car loses, the pole ain't in such good shape, either.

[papaof2]

I've seen the car vs pole event where the car lost twice. The first time as it hit the pole and crumpled some part of the car and the second time as the transformer dropped on the car. Having the transformer come off the pole typically breaks the high voltage input lines to the transformer and the 120/240 drops to whatever meters that transformer feeds or stretches the wires so badly they need to be replaced. If you were one of the unlucky people getting power from that transformer, the transformer's fall could pull the weatherhead out of the roof or off the side of the house (aerial power feed, the most common thing back then).

The pole repair takes a while, as they need a crane truck to get the transformer off the car and then a wrecker to move the car and then they can assess the damage to the pole. If the pole breaks when hit, it may take other poles or many feet of the high voltage line down with it. If the damage extends to a weatherhead, those people may need a carpenter and a roofer in addition to an electrician, depending on the amount of damage.

When I was in high school (back 10 years after the Dark Ages), we lived in the second house from a designed-for-failure intersection. It was a 4-way stop but the north-south street was 2 lanes to the north and 4 lanes to the south of the intersection. The east-west street was 2 lanes to the west and 4 lanes to the east of the intersection. Lots of people missed the stop signs and when they missed one of the stop signs going from 4 lane to 2 lane they usually were going too fast to do anything other than stop against the power pole that was across the intersection. We'd be awakened during the night by SCREECH! CRASH! and just dial 0 to report the accident without even looking out a window (remember, this was long before 911 and the dials were rotary). Yes, it happened that often. We weren't affected by those outages as our powerlines ran down the alley behind that house and were fed separately from the lines that crossed the intersection.