Ice storms and power outages

By Wesley Fryer On December 10, 2007 · · 5 Comments

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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:

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.

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On this day..

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http://www.speakingofhistory.blogspot.com Eric Langhorst

Hang in there Wes. Up here in KC we are expected to get some of it tonight, although not as bad as you have it in OK. We are expecting some power outages tonight and possibily no school for the next couple of days. I have been following your journey to the big island and today while watching the news one of my first thoughts was “Wow, Wes is going to be in for quite a climate swing!” Stay warm and we’ll try to do the same.
http://cpeppler.edublogs.org Cory Peppler

Glad to hear you made it home safely, Wes! Especially after th e footage we were getting on our local news. We are now starting to get the same system up here in Wisconsin that walloped you guys. Nasty stuff.

And I loved the personal digital story of your travel adventures. Reminded me of our flight (and accompanying tribulations!) back from HI last Christmas. Add a sick two-year-old into the mix…
http://ryancollins.org/wp/ Ryan Collins

When we were hit with a bad ice storm two years ago I finally broke down and bought a generator. We haven’t lost power for any length of time since.

During minor power outages I found I can run an extension cord from a power inverter in my car in the garage to the cable modem and go online. If the cable goes out, I’m stuck back on dial-up.
http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

That is a great idea, Ryan. I could have actually tried that inverter trick! Thankfully our power was restored this afternoon, hopefully it will stay on. The power company graph shows the number of reported outages flattened today, and in the past 3 hours the graph finally started to go negative, indicating more people are getting power restored than are reporting it lost.

Thanks for the feedback on the travel video, Cory… it was quite an adventure. Thankfully the unhappy kids on our trip all belonged to others on our flights this time! It would have been great to have some or all the family in Hawaii, but I wouldn’t have wanted to subject them to that travel adventure!

Eric, I hope the storm is easier on the KC area than it has on Oklahoma. Some newscasters are calling this “the ice storm of the century.” And, it looks like we may be in for some snow this weekend. Now we just need to get a cord of wood before the snow comes!
http://www.speakingofhistory.blogspot.com Eric Langhorst

Wes – The storm up here ended up being not as bad as advertised. We lost power for about an hour this morning but then it came back so not much to complain about here. Tonight is supposed to be just a little freezing rain and a dusting of snow. Looks like we’ll be back in school tomorrow. Best wishes for all the people of Oklahoma. We had a bad ice storm in 2002 and were out of school for a week. It’s not a lot of fun.

Eric