Another idea that you've probably already taken action on is to get night lights that turn on when the power goes out, so you're not stumbling around in the dark. https://www.lowes.com/pd/EcoSurvivor-Power-Failure-Gray-LED-Night-Light-Auto-On-Off/1000268317 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Energizer-White-LED-Night-Light-Auto-On-Off/1000268337
I have some bulbs that are like regular bulbs but they hold a charge so that they stay on when the power goes out. We haven't had any long-term power outages so I don't know how long the charge lasts but it beats having to fumble in the dark for a lantern or a flashlight.
Tuesday night it got down to 20°. Wednesday night the low was 45°. Thursday's high is 61°. Friday's high is [briefly] 34° ..(gonna drop to 40° at 4AM, hit freezing by 8am, level off, then fall again starting at 2PM) Friday night it's getting down to 17°. Next week it's gonna be back up on the 50s again. Daggone mid-Atlantic winters. It's a wonder we don't have pneumonia all the time.
We'll have a high of 56 on Christmas, so I think I'll go swimming. Perhaps I won't have to, as it comes with heavy rain. That may get rid of all of our snow.
I think you'll be getting the rain that's going through Virginia right now...followed by high winds and a 40' drop in temps. I hope this soaked ground and the ensuing high winds don't mean that we'll be cutting our own horizontal trees on Christmas, just so we can get out.
We're supposed to have high winds along with the warm weather and the rain tomorrow, and they're warning of power outages. Before Maine decided to hook up to the NE power grid, we rarely had outages.
I'm on a site called "Next Door," that's like a neighborhood FaceBook. Out here, my neighborhood extends over 10 miles end-to-end. My electricity is through a small co-op that serves about 31,000 customers in 14-15 counties...that's not a whole lot. Basically, they got the dregs after the larger utilities (with the support of politicians) cherry-picked the dense areas. My co-op does a good job. I'm not real active with them, but I do attend meetings and ask questions. The big unapproachable guys stink. This past week with all the ice & bad weather, I keep seeing posts like "Why is my Dominion Electric power out all the time when the guy across the street with the co-op always has his lights on?" Those Dominion people are in subdivisions, while guys like me way off the paved road have more reliable juice than they could ever dream of.
Tomorrow, Christmas, our high will be around 55 degrees. my son and grandson are coming over to have lunch with us. He will cook steaks and either mashed or baked potatoes and another vegetable or two. We have chocolate cake for desert. My son is preparing it all and will bring it over. I will try to do the cleaning up afterwards. Today's high has been 49. Good weather here. I hear it has been windy through out Virginia up through the Carolinas and northward and maybe some storms. Hope tomorrow is a good day for everyone. From the above comments I have determined to get another lantern or two. I have one but during our last black out I had trouble finding it.. It was twenty-three here this morning. I got cold.
Just west of me in the Virginia mountains, winds are gonna top 55MPH. It's been +2" of rain here and the equivalent in snow out that way...we got flood warnings here. Those root systems are gonna be loose. Lots of trees are gonna be down. When I moved here 10 years ago, I bought a bunch of hurricane lanterns and some lantern fuel, expecting the worse. I've had one instance of a multiple-day outage, and that's because a transformer blew at a transfer station and they had a hard time getting the replacement delivered.
We have a sub station serving my area of town that I do believe you could spit at it and it would go down. Often has been the case it has gone down during a rain shower. It is always repaired within a few hours but it has been worrisome. The houses across the street never go out except in a major storm or power outage due to ice. Here’s hoping you stay warm and dry and ife is good to you. @John Brunner
I believe that transfer station issue existed when my co-op was buying electricity from Dominion under a long-term contract. That contract expired, so it's possible that the station is no longer in play for me.
This is still sort of weather related, and it's kind of interesting... Central Virginia Electric Co-op (CVEC) supplies power to Wintergreen Ski Resort. It presents an interesting cost issue for such a small utility, because power consumption increases in the winter anyway (due to resistance heating), and this large resort only operates during peak-demand cold weather. That means that there is no revenue created during the other 9 months of the year by the generating capacity and transmission infrastructure required to serve it. The peak system-wide demand is 240 MW in the winter, while summertime demand is only 150MW. A larger utility with a broader customer base would not see a 60% swing like this...it obviously has cost implications for the year-round customers.