10th December 2007

Ice storms and power outages

posted in edtech | 5 Comments

It’s been quite a shock to go from 75+ degree weather in Hawaii to sub-freezing temperatures and an ice storm in Oklahoma. According to an article on NewsOK.com this morning, “More than 400,000 utility customers are without power in Oklahoma right now.” Those customers include our family in southeastern Edmond. We lost power sometime in the night, and still do not have power although the electricity has come on briefly four different times during the day. I have been able to work online today briefly from Panera, which was packed and VERY slow Internet-wise, as well as from our church. It has been nice to still have Internet access via my iPhone even without electricity at home.

The following graph shows how many customers have been without electricity from our power company in the last 24 hours. Unfortunately, more people are continuing to lose power:

OG&E Electric Services | System Watch |Graph - Daily Outages

I just checked the power company’s updated online graph and it shows an additional 20,000 customers have lost power in the last hour.

All area schools were closed today, roads have been treacherous although some improved with falling rain as well as traffic use. We saw an ice-laden branch crash into the other lane of a two lane road near our house earlier this morning when we were out. Haven’t seen any accidents personally but there have been several deaths around the state related to the bad weather in the past 2 days.

I am scheduled to present tomorrow in a COSN webinar titled “Broadband Boot Camp for Educators” at noon US central time. I anticipate being able to be online and participate in this. Hopefully our home electricity and Internet access will be restored by then, but if not I should be able to (again) get online elsewhere. Thankfully this is not scheduled for first thing in the morning.