Datechguy's Blog

One of the side effects of being married to a nurse is that storm or no storm she is expected at work for 6:45.

Got up at 5 and decided that the best move would be to go out the front door, shovel to the street and use the street to access the driveway and dig out the cars from there (My property is in an L shape surrounding the house at the corner.

The first thing I noticed was my sign for Rosemary Reynolds was gone, buried or blown away who knows?

The sun was down and I couldn’t see much but by 6 a.m. the driveway was dug out so me and my neighbor could get out if needed. I drove to the front and picked up the wife and headed off.

As soon as I left our neighborhood (and passed the 5th street diner still open as always during storms) we realized how lucky we were.

Our neighborhood seems to be the only place in sight with power. It was pitch black. At the corner of John Fitch Highway and Summer street there was a large collection of trucks and plows congregated at the parking lot where Dutch Kitchen is located. During the drive to Keystone nursing center we observed trees bent and broken. it was reminiscent of the Ice storm 3 years ago as branches littered the side of all the roads.

The wife’s nursing home was on generator and I was unable to enter the driveway, I dropped her off and took these pictures of the trip home, it was both beautiful and not a pretty sight.

I tried to take some running video but there just wasn’t much light, here is what I managed

At the nursing home

On the Road

I set my camera on automatic double shot, opened my drivers window and let the camera take shots as there was no safe place to stop.

Although the roads were fairly empty driving still involved dodging branches in the road and it was time to put the camera away.

By the time I got back to the intersection at John Fitch all the collected trucks and plows were gone as I got to the 5th street diner I stopped in to check on Tina and Ed

Their home in Lunenburg was without power and the drive in involved dodging wires. I talked to a city worker who had been out since 3:30 p.m. yesterday who stopped in for breakfast before going out again.

The biggest problem he said was the wires, they were not allowed to touch trees in contact with wires that had to wait for Unitel. The second problem was the surprising number of people on the road. He suspected he would easily be flat out for the rest of the day. With the number of downed wires and trees Unitel and the city has their work cut out for them.

As the sun rose it was clear things were worse than I had first thought, a tree in my back yard had snapped and the back yard was both impassable and unsafe

View from the driveway

From the back door

And the tree in the front that my wife named Warren (don’t ask me why) wasn’t doing so good either

I suspect the only reason it didn’t snap is my son and I shook some of the snow off last night

Either way as I still have power, the roads are possible and any damage is minimal I got off very light compared to almost everyone else.

There is also an interesting political angle, in 8 days there is an election for mayor, the challenger City Counselor Joe Solomito had been safely ahead but Mayor Lisa Wong on the basis of a strong performance in the final debate had closed the gap considerably. This storm and how it is handled, fairly or unfairly, could be the make or break point in the election. As Tip O’Neill always said, all politics is local, and that’s particularity if you are without power or with downed wires and trees blocking your way.

Update: Instalanche. Hope the increased traffic doesn’t tip it over the edge. Remember it hit 80 here just 3 weeks ago.