When It Rains, It Pours

The saga continues . . . 

In my last post, I described the "Do Not Use" water restrictions that we had experienced as well as the first 3 or 4 days of the current cold spell. At that time, the temperature had not risen above the freezing mark for several days, but the worst was still ahead of us.

So, where are we now.

It's almost a week after the cold front began, and we still haven't seen a reading above freezing. 

This past Sunday, it began to snow. Basically, once it started, it didn't stop until late in the day. At this time, I do not know what our snow totals were, but we did get several inches, much more than both of our previous snows combined.

Eagle-Eye Donna spotted this woodpecker on the oak tree out front while working at her kitchen sink just as the snow was getting started.

Now, my memory is not what it once was, so forgive any errors I make. But in looking back at texts I shared with my brother and my daughter and the time stamps on them, here is what I can relate.

This was after the snow had been falling for a while. This is the view from the front door across the street.

It was cold Sunday night/Monday morning. At 8:24 AM, it was -1 degree here. Our power had gone out about 4:00 earlier that morning, so it was beginning to get cold in the house. About 10:15 that morning, our power returned. We were able to warm the house, get some hot coffee, then have a hot meal. However, just before 1:00 PM, the power went back off. About 3:30 PM, the power returned, but only for half an hour or so. 

You can see the stop sign and street sign, but can you see the road?

This is the view towards the clubhouse. Again, there is a street out there; a street lamp is visible in the very center of the picture.

This is looking due east from our back door across a street to a neighbor's house. Where is that street?

Our power would then remain off until about 11:30 Tuesday morning. That's a little more than 19 hours without power. But we feel fortunate as some folks have gone much longer. And in all that time, the interior temperature never dropped below 50. Yeah, we sat around in layered clothing with gloves on doing our best impersonations of Bernie Sanders at a Presidential inauguration, but it could have been worse.

This was taken just after dark. The street light had just come on. The street is still pristine. Old people don't like to drive on icy/snowy roads.

This is the scene we woke to early Monday. Ruts in the street are visible now; our security patrol likes driving in snow. I guess he spent the entire night slipping and sliding around our community.

You can clearly see tracks in the snow in this picture.

Late Tuesday afternoon, perhaps around 4 or so (no texts to reference here for exact times), we were notified of a "boil water" notice for the entire city. This was a result of breaks in water mains throughout the city. Well, we could certainly live with that since we had now been enjoying power for several hours. Then an hour or so later, we were notified that our area of the city would lose water completely as a result of the ruptured mains. So, around 8:30 or so, we lost all water and are still without it.

The snow drifted on our front patio rather nicely. It's about a foot deep here; more along the wall.

When we awoke this morning (Wednesday), we still had no water; however, we did have power -- until about 8:00 AM. Fortunately, the power only remained off for about 5 hours, and we now have electricity again. We look forward to getting entirely back to normal, but we are doing fine at this time.

I hate being inconvenienced like this, especially at this stage of our lives. But I always think about how fortunate we truly are. People all over the world suffer so much more and do without so many of the essentials of life. Even in the U.S., I think about all the folks who suffer through tornadoes, tropical storms of all sorts, massive wildfires, flooding and other disasters and are forced to do without for long periods of time, much longer than what we are enduring here.

I'll end here. It is now Wednesday about 2:00, so no telling what lies ahead. We expect more freezing weather tonight, tomorrow, and tomorrow night. It will finally start warming Friday, and the weekend should actually be pretty nice. I'm rather confident this will mean we have power, but the water issue continues to bother me. I have no idea how long the mains will take to repair.

Various auto tracks through the snow on the street behind our house. You can see that there is some depth to the snow, and none of the pavement is visible at this point, despite the traffic.

Drift of snow hanging on the south eave of our neighbor's house. Snow came from the north.

Turkeys in the snow. These guys get around. They roosted the next night on highlines behind this location.

Water frozen as it comes out of the downspout.