Snow Storm – Day One

I woke up at 3:15 this morning, now granted, I went to bed at around 2:00, so I hadn’t quite fallen asleep. My computer is plugged into a surge protector that has a battery in it, so I woke up to hear my computer beeping away to let me know that it was running off the battery. I tried to turn it off but eventually ran out of time and it shut off by itself. I made my way to my bed in a pitch black room. As I lied there, I saw a flash of light. I thought it was a little strange the power was out and thatt there was lightning, and yet I could hear nothing. No rain, no wind; there was no storm. I never even heard thunder to accompany the flash I saw.

I woke up to my phone’s alarm at 8:00. The power was still off, so I figured I could try to get some extra sleep, so I stayed right where I was. My mom came in to ask me what my schedule was for the day. I knew right away that I was being drafted to help her decorate since she was taking a furlough day. She continued to tell me that I probably wasn’t going to be going to school today. As I was getting up she said that I was missing all the snow outside.

I looked out my window to see all the trees filled with snow. I changed out of my pajamas and took my mom’s camera for a walk with my dad around the property.

My car would need to be moved so no trees would fall on if. We had plenty of limbs to cut because the weight from the snow was pulling them down. We found several of the larger branches were already broken and causing a dangerous area around them.

When we got to the road we started walking down the hill to see how everyone else was doing. About halfway I stopped to take some pictures and noticed a cable lying across a bush. I told my dad and then we looked for where it came from. We figured it must have been one of the power lines. As I looked up I noticed that one of the cables between the poles was gone, and the end that broke was on the side closer to the house. I could only guess that this was the cause of the flash of light that I saw when the power went out. Until we could get a PG&E truck out to fix it, we were going to have no power.

I helped my dad cut away a bunch of the branches that were hanging in our driveway so that we could try to get out. There was a large limb at the top of our driveway that would take some work to get cleared, so I worked with the clippers on some of the other hanging branches so my dad could get his truck out.

By early afternoon, the sno was starting to melt, and we could hear chainsaws working away all around us. I decided to use the 5-7 inches of snow to create a snow man. When we finished, my dad and I went back in the house to take nice warm showers and change into dryer clothes. While I was in the shower, my parents attempted to drive out and pick up the table we ordered for Christmas, but by the time they got to the next road and back as a test run, they realized we couldn’t try to get out yet, then called the furniture store from the truck, the only phone we had with reception and power (darn Vonage).

We were able to connect our generator we use for the fifth wheel to power the refrigerator and a lamp that we used to play Rummikub with. After we were all gamed out, we moved the power over to the television to check if we had any cable. No luck, so instead we watched a movie.

As this day ended and I sat by the dieing fire, I was just about ready for bed. This entire post was written by hand with paper and pencil, and the night would mark the first in a long time that I went to bed before midnight (9:30PM). Here’s hoping for a warm tomorrow to melt the snow.