Well, my power went out...

[HafCoJoe]

Around an hour ago the power went out so here I am stuck on my phone using the remnant of my battery life. Anyways, discuss and post stories of your own power outages if you want. :confused:

[Findthepin1]

In 2006 or so I was at my house and we were watching the Groundhog Day broadcasts because that's the time of year it was and the power went out. The TV went dark and so did the room. It was raining outside, and it was night. This has happened twice or thrice since then, we don't get many thunderstorms big enough to do that.

[boxley]

ooh, had the worst of it a while ago, I think it was 08? 09? where the united states was somehow totally snowed over and cold and icey rain covered the entirety of my county like an inch deep, power was out for like 2 weeks straight so we bought a generator to keep the fridge running

[Just Jim]

I live just north of Tampa, Florida, and during the summer rainy season, it's a 50/50 bet the afternoon T-storm will knock it out for a while.
And there's the always wonderful tropical storms and hurricanes. Those can take it out for 2-3 days. But we're used to it down here. There are flashlight everywhere, and I've spent many mornings making coffee and breakfast on a bar-b-que grill in the rain, and looked over to see my neighbors doing the same. The only down side is it can get boring after a couple days... but I love to read, so that's not really a problem.

[HafCoJoe]

Yay entertaining things to read! We sadly don't get too much snow up here but we did have a particularly long outage when there was a gigantic wind storm around 2009 if I recall correctly. Fun in a boring sort of way... Hehe.

[Rithsom]

Power outages do not occur often where I live, and when they do, it is only for thirty minutes at the most. I guess I am quite fortunate compared to the rest of you. :confused:

[Vanamonde]

I live in California and did when the power kept going out during the power shortages a few years ago. But mine stayed on because I lived near a fire station, and they have to have power for safety reasons. Neener. Later, of course, it was revealed that the whole thing was an Enron scam to charge California emergency rates, and we'd had plenty of power the whole time.

[Shpaget]

This one time when power went out, I went downstairs and talked to the family members. Turns out they're quite nice people.

[KerbMav]

Last time I picked up a book, luckily it was still sunny enough to read that evening.
Regarding storms I got lucky, there were some nasty occurrences in the last years.

But power outages are really rare where I live. At most we get a power fluctuation that does not even pop the fuses but restarts everything.
In some rural areas of the country this is more of a problem, going as far as people depending on their computers for work to buy UPSs to intercept such spikes.

I could suggest something based on Vanamonde's post, but I am not sure if ranting about big corporations also not investing enough in maintenance and infrastructure in favor of new Ferraris or to get the government/citizens to believe their "we need those power plants" to avoid building a reliable power grid would conform to forum policy. :P

[quote name='Shpaget']This one time when power went out, I went downstairs and talked to the family members. Turns out they're quite nice people.[/QUOTE]

Woah, you so hard core, dude! :D :wink:

[StrandedonEarth]

[quote name='Avera9eJoe']Around an hour ago the power went out so here I am stuck on my phone using the remnant of my battery life. Anyways, discuss and post stories of your own power outages if you want. :confused:[/QUOTE]

You got walloped by the same storm we did, luckily we only lost power twice for a few minutes each time, although the downtown part of my city was out for awhile. Some pretty pictures on the news of the sky being lit up by exploding transformers in North Vancouver as well.

Edit: forgot to mention the wind did a number on my fence too. I also saw a friend's video of a transformer on fire, but she panned away just as it blew up Edited November 18, 2015 by StrandedonEarth

[Fluburtur]

The other day I was playing with one of my tubes radio and power went out in my house, I was just trying to see if I could actually hear a radio station.

[LordFerret]

I've been through some major power outages over the years. The first big one I remember was 1965, the NYC skyline totally devoid of light, no radio or tv broadcasts. There have been quite a few others as well, including power loss from hurricanes and ice storms and major snow storms... even power outages from heat. It's nothing unusual actually. We've come to expect it and stay prepared.

[HafCoJoe]

Update, power is still out a day later :( my neighborhood looks like the wastelands now...

[CommanderSpock]

A few years back, there was hurricane Irene and "snowtober". A total of around three weeks of no power within the space of 1.5 months.

[Vanamonde]

[QUOTE][COLOR=#333333]power is still out a day later [/COLOR][/QUOTE]
Time to resort to cannibalism.

[HafCoJoe]

[quote name='Vanamonde']Time to resort to cannibalism.[/QUOTE]
Hehehe I am a triplet so if I ate one of my brothers it would sort of count as eating myself... :confused:

Powers still out though

[TheSaint]

I remember the Western States outage back in '96. I was up in Pasadena with a buddy of mine at a Christian book store. I was all set to check out with some CDs when the power went out. Suddenly they were cash-only, and I had no cash. I waited about ten minutes to see if the power was going to come back on, but it didn't so we decided to take off. Out in the parking lot we saw that the power was out as far as we could see. There was a fire in a basement electrical room a couple of buildings over, either because of the outage or just coincidentally, and the whole street was filling up with fire trucks, so we decided to just sit tight and not try to go anywhere until things calmed down a bit. While we were waiting, we found out that there was a lady with her kids in the parking lot who had locked her keys in her car in all the commotion. I was a AAA member, so I went back into the store and called them to come out and help her out. (Back then you got four free AAA uses per year, and I hadn't used any of them.) We waited around for the tow truck to show up, chatting in the parking lot. When he got there he slim-jimmed her door open and she was good to go. By that point the fire was out and the fire trucks were starting to break up, so my buddy and I hopped in the car and left. By time we got back to my place the power was back on. Just a weird day, very memorable.

[11of10]

How is the night sky?

I remember in 1999, one night entire Serbia was without power, and I went out in the yard, and was positively impressed with the sky!
So many stars.

I never saw anything like it ever again. I guess I'd have to move to Sahara or Antarctica to repeat that experience...

[Dartguy]

About 8-9 years ago, the remnants of a hurricane hit here and knocked the power out to most of the city for over a week. Luckily, the temperature was not too bad.

Then the next year, an ice storm paralyzed the city. My power was out for 2 weeks, my fish all died (some were over 10 years old) I haven't wanted to set up the aquarium since then. Had to stay with the inlaws, puke. Basement flooded, etc.

Before then, and since, I have never seen the power out for more than 10 minutes in 44 years.

[LordFerret]

[quote name='Vanamonde']Time to resort to cannibalism.[/QUOTE]

Yay for Long Pig. ;)

[roarke]

Where i live, power goes out a few times a month. At night, so people won't sue the company.

[HoloYolo]

Remember ole Hurricane Sandy? My Pennsylvania suburb was right it its path. It took a long time to lose the power too, so we watched movies to wait it out before it happened. We went to a friend's house who had a generator that was powerful enough to power the whole house, so we watched movies there. The power at our house came back on after that night, as we live right on a business strip with a fire department. The power here never stays out for more than a few hours. We get lucky. But we're moving soon, so we might have to endure outages for a week.

God dangit Mom.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

*Has rooftop solar* *Grins evilly while reading posts*

[HoloYolo]

[quote name='Mad Rocket Scientist']*Has rooftop solar* *Grins evilly while reading posts*[/QUOTE]I doubt that does much for power though, as most of the time when power goes out it's from wind or severe storms.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

[quote name='Kaboom!']I doubt that does much for power though, as most of the time when power goes out it's from wind or severe storms.[/QUOTE]
Solar panels AND batteries.