TBRS1 and the Frost Giants

[TBRS1]

A few weeks ago, Northern Michigan was hit by a massive ice storm.

I don't have photos - we lost power and all my electronics went dead, quickly - but you've seen beautiful photos of ice covered twigs. They're very wonderful. The entire world looks like a magic mythic dreamscape.

It was like that, but geared up to max power.

Instead of the usual 1/8 - 1/4 inches of coating, the world labored under over a half inch of ice.

The hardwoods - oaks and maples - shed dead limbs. The young pines bent over and layed on the ground, while some of the larger pines bent and broke. The poplars (or "aspen trees"), being stiff and inflexible, had it the worst, with many breaking off about 8 - 12 feet up.

During the storm and for the next four days things were weird.

While walking the forest I could hear, everywhere, the gunshot like sound of great trees breaking and shedding ice.

There would be a loud CRACK, followed by a CRASH as the branch or tree, following gravity, tore through the other trees and found the ground. The crack and crash was accompanied by cascading ice splinters, making a sound that, I imagine, is what a vast crystal chandelier would sound like if it encountered the floor at Versailles.

This didn't happen sometimes, nor did it happen often. It happened constantly, in every direction, for four days.

I don't believe in frost giants, but I will be honest with you...

...it sure sounded and felt like there were angry frost giants straight out of Norse mythology stomping around, terrorizing the neighborhood.

Watch out for angry frost giants. They may be real. This is a strange planet, and some of the dangers are rather poorly defined.

 

[WhitewaterWoman]

It's always humbling to experience what Mother Nature can do.

 

[tlc]

It was definitely an eerie experience. Total silence except the sound of generators in the distance, trees snapping off and falling, ice chunks raining down from the trees. I put on a hat and hood to try and shield myself from the falling ice when I was out working on my generator.

I didn’t get it as bad as some of the surrounding areas. Some of my coworkers were and their families were out of power for several weeks. I was out for 4 days. These are some pictures from my yard, and one from the newspaper that was taken about a mile away. But some places looked like a hurricane had gone through. From online footage. I didn’t leave the house until the next Thursday when my work finally got power back.

I imagine next year at this time we are still going to be looking at the damage in places.

It’s definitely humbling. We may be free from more common natural disasters here (larger tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis) and get more moderated temperatures. But something like this ice storm can really hit us at any time.

It’s one thing if it’s localized, but something else when most of the region is out of power, which means no heat or water unless you have other means. No stores or gas stations open when they can’t operate. One coworker was having to drive 30 miles one way for generator gas, but they would only have gas for so long. Basically everyone just making do with whatever they had. My generator was gonna run maybe a week until my propane tank went empty, and with people saying I might be out for weeks, I had to ration what I had. Some people lost their internet and phone service during this time too.

I’m definitely looking into ways to be more prepared for next time, as it could happen again.

 

[TBRS1]

It was definitely a shocker.

I'm used to massive snowfalls - although we don't get them as often as we did 15 - 20 years ago, but I was under prepared. Power had been fairly reliable for the past decade.

I'm going to look into one of those generators that kicks in when the power goes down, and runs off the household pig (giant propane tank, for those who don't know).

I am anticipating increasing weather instability over time. I'm not a prepper, but it seems like it would be wise to prepare. I'm switching my gardens over to low rainfall techniques, and planning backup systems for systems that need some backup.

The power company that supplies us was one of the worst hit, although we were only out of power from Saturday to Friday.

 

[tlc]

I'm used to regular outages, like once every month or two. Usually they last 4 hours or so, and one time before this it lasted almost 2 days.

I have one of those generators you are describing. The previous owner installed it, a 8kw Generac (smallest they make as far as I know) that runs off the pig (no natural gas here). It kicks in about 10 seconds after the power goes out. Thankfully that delay is short enough where the pellet stove will resume where it left off. It will run the whole house, but I only need about 1.5 kw to run the essentials. At that load it consumes about 1.5 gal/hr. Which doesn't seem like much, but that's 36 gal/day. And just say if the tank was completely full at 80%, that's 400 gal, and if I didn't run anything else (water heater, stove) it would last 11 days. I had about a week in mine. That's also about $100 a day in fuel, based on local prices. A plus is it will run even if the natural gas pumping stations are without power.

I ran mine on manual mode, only running it at night. I first cranked up the freezer to full cold, got the house as warm as I could with the pellet stove on high, jacked up everything in the basement so the water had room to flood, and filled every water container I had. Then I cut it off for the day.

For the future I'm really thinking about those battery backup units that will run appliances for 15-20 hours, and take 2-3 hours to charge up. Then I could limit the generator use to 2-3 hours a day, getting me a lot farther along on whatever is left in my tank. The ideal thing would be some kind of generator that ran off burning wood, since I have no shortage of that.

 

[TBRS1]

I'm used to regular outages, like once every month or two. Usually they last 4 hours or so, and one time before this it lasted almost 2 days.

I have one of those generators you are describing. The previous owner installed it, a 8kw Generac (smallest they make as far as I know) that runs off the pig (no natural gas here). It kicks in about 10 seconds after the power goes out. Thankfully that delay is short enough where the pellet stove will resume where it left off. It will run the whole house, but I only need about 1.5 kw to run the essentials. At that load it consumes about 1.5 gal/hr. Which doesn't seem like much, but that's 36 gal/day. And just say if the tank was completely full at 80%, that's 400 gal, and if I didn't run anything else (water heater, stove) it would last 11 days. I had about a week in mine. That's also about $100 a day in fuel, based on local prices. A plus is it will run even if the natural gas pumping stations are without power.

I ran mine on manual mode, only running it at night. I first cranked up the freezer to full cold, got the house as warm as I could with the pellet stove on high, jacked up everything in the basement so the water had room to flood, and filled every water container I had. Then I cut it off for the day.

For the future I'm really thinking about those battery backup units that will run appliances for 15-20 hours, and take 2-3 hours to charge up. Then I could limit the generator use to 2-3 hours a day, getting me a lot farther along on whatever is left in my tank. The ideal thing would be some kind of generator that ran off burning wood, since I have no shortage of that.

I wonder how effective it would be to charge the storage batteries by a slow solar unit so they would be ready in an emergency?

Obviously, the solar is useless during the storm, but electricity stored in a battery array (say a bunch of truck batteries) would come in useful.

 

[tlc]

I thought about that too, even enough solar panels to run the essentials and charge the batteries in the poorest conditions. Like 10% output maybe? I don’t know, I’ve never even bothered to attempt solar around here. Even if the weather was decent, I’m surrounded by trees which I will absolutely not cut down. They block a lot of wind in the winter to help with heating, and a lot of sun in the summer to where I don’t even need AC with the shades open on the hot days.

 

[WhitewaterWoman]

I make sure I can do without electricity. Period.

I know what you mean about not cutting down trees, tlc. I’m of the exact same opinion.

 

[TBRS1]

I make sure I can do without electricity. Period.

I know what you mean about not cutting down trees, tlc. I’m of the exact same opinion.

I went out each morning and cut enough fallen limbs for the day's fire, and cooked on the wood stove, but the refrigerator was a problem.

Also, flush toilets - no electric, no water pump. I value flush toilets highly.