"weather-drew" (noun):
A nickname used by a systems administrator, web developer and network engineer living in Oklahoma, working in the weather industry. He does not make donuts.
Previous Blog Entries:
- The Things We Do For Dogs (To Dogs?)
- Dreamworks + Ghost in the Shell
- The Ice Storm
- Beef Ribs, The Triumph
- Laughing Man Hacks You
- Gary Get's National
- SimCity 5 - Societies
- Digital Atmosphere
- New Friends, Old Friends
- Classic Super Cell Anyone?
- (Show More Archives...)
The Ice Storm
It was almost cinematic. The ice storm earlier this week was by far the worst I've experienced since moving back to the plains in 2004. The damage to power infrastructure was amazing and due primarily to tree's falling into power line's. There was at one point 600,000 people across the state without power, stretching basically along the I-44 corridor.
Forecasters were fairly certain of the details and timing of the storm by Friday morning. Ice storm warnings were posted and from everything I've seen to far the forecast accumulations were very accurate.
As part of preparation for the storm, Friday morning I decided to play it safe and ran out to a local power equipment dealer to pickup a Honda EU2000i generator. After some quick research and a recommendation from a co-worker, I put it to the test on Monday when I lost power around 9am in the morning.
If you ever find yourself in need of portable electricity and don't mind paying for higher quality (which you pretty much have to if you need clean power which can be used to power computers) then go with a Honda. While I don't want to turn this post into a commercial, I would say that it's probably the best $900.00 investment I've made in quite some time.
Power was restored late in the afternoon on Monday but I seem to have been more of the exception than the rule. Norman, as a whole - and especially the denser portions of the city (areas around Campus and Brookhaven for example) are extremely devastated. The damage to trees is incredible and under my estimation, nearly 90% of all trees in those areas sustained broken large sized limbs or have lost entire trunk's thru splitting. The city looks like what one would see in the aftermath of an Oklahoma tornado; except the houses are actually still standing.