Because Of The Huge Windstorm

I'm back! It probably wasn't even noticeable that I was gone, but I was. We had a huge windstorm! As a result, my electricity was gone for about a day and a half. I got lucky, because I had a post already queued up for yesterday. I was able to answer a few comments yesterday, from another computer, but that was all I could do here.

It was sometime in the middle of the night when my power went out. The wind sounded, and felt, like it was going to blow my house away. I'm glad I'm a mouse, and not a little pig, or I might be homeless right now. When the lights went out, I looked out the window, and saw bright flashes down the street.

It turned out to be a power line that had been knocked down by something. The huge flash, and the light it was giving off, brightened up the night. Everything was bright, except the things that were supposed to be, including my house. It must have been a very violent scene down there that night. I'm glad I wasn't anywhere near it.

The first photo above shows the area where the power line went down. They had to block the road, so that nobody would be killed by it. I really had nothing better to do than to drive around looking at the destruction. I don't like when people do that, but I had a reason. If I didn't do it, I wouldn't be able to report on it here.

For miles around, the traffic lights were out. Luckily the other drivers, for the most part, followed the rules of the road at these intersections. It was much easier getting through these areas than I expected. There were of course the crazies out there, but not really as many as there could have been.

I actually drove around for several hours looking at these things. I was hoping they would fix the power quickly, but it was obvious to me that it wasn't going to happen. I really hate when the power goes out like this. If it was warmer outside, it wouldn't be so bad. Since it's the middle of winter, it was a small disaster.

Here's something funny that I saw along the way. Look closely at the pickup. There are painted flames on it. This is an official truck from the fire department. Of course, you can see the official markings all over it. This is the only place that I have ever seen something like this. They must get a lot of money for this. Maybe somebody donated this. I really don't know.

As you can see, there are plenty of firemen and trucks from the fire department, but there is no sign of anything from the electric company. They must have been very busy, so they couldn't get to this yet. I really have no idea how many places like this there were around here. I didn't have much access to the news for a long time.

This is another scene that was repeated very many times near me. I took around a dozen pictures like this one. There were trees down everywhere I went. I saw another place with a row of trees down, and there were just as many more there that were ready to fall.

These others were uprooted about halfway, but had not fallen yet. I don't know what happens to them when they're like that, but I guess I'm going to find out. I couldn't get any shots of these, because of heavy traffic, but I'm sure you can imagine just from what's in the picture above.

Take a closer look at the size of this tree. There is a house behind it. The tree is almost bigger than the house. These were powerful winds that knocked that tree down. I wonder what kind of devastation these winds did at some of the nature parks.

Since I wasn't in any great hurry to go home, I decided to check out some of the parks. Woodland Hills has a history of fallen trees that I've documented here a few times before. I halfway knew what I might find when I went there, and I wasn't wrong.

I kind of figured it would be closed to the public on this day. I was right. I would have liked to go in there and see what became of this forest, but I wasn't going to do it even if this place was open. I'm guessing that it's not a very safe place to be right now. Trees seem to fall down in there every time there's a large storm. I'll check it out as soon as it's safe.

Well, that's a small sampling of what happened. My electricity came back on about forty five minutes before I got home from work on Monday. Before that, I had to stay with relatives. A day and a half before it came back. I'm happy to be able to sleep in my own bed again.

I'd like to say that the power outage is not really an everyday adventure, but my power goes out at least once a year. Usually it's during the summer, so it's not so bad. You would think they'd figure this out, and fix it in my area. I hope that's it for this year.

I had planned on showing another odd bit of weather. The snow that I've been showing lately is gone! Over a foot of snow melted in just one day! I have pictures of some of the flooding that it caused. I'll show you some of these things in the upcoming days, unless something else happens.

As I write this, the wind is blowing again. It's not as bad as before, and I hope it's not going to be another problem. I've had enough of this wind for now. Tomorrow will be a better day, and I'll be back to my hiking. I hope I'll have more time on here then too. See you then.