Northeastern state Blizzard

[BrokenToys]

25" in my yard out on the forks of Long Island. It prob would be more if the bottom 3" of it wasn't pure frozen ice/slush.

 

[Dalmatian90]

Well that went even more spectacularly worse then how bad I thought it would go.

Conclusion after 30 minutes and 20' of progress...twenty feet garden tractor wide, not car wide...

I have a home office, 500' driveway, smidge over 2' of snow, and highs around 40º all week.

I can wait for it to melt.

Guess if I don't have better equipment by the next time, I'll have to plow the whole driveway open a couple times during the storm.

 

[KindredSpiritzz]

whats up with all the power outages , i just don't get that. I live in wisconsin and we're always getting storms and snow and I remember ONCE after a big wind storm losing power for about 6 hrs, never for days on end. Outages here are very rare and powers always back in in an hour or two tops. Seems any storm down south or out east and powers off for half million people for days. Guess i could understand a hurricane but not a snow storm. Anyways, that would suck having no power for days.

 

[Dalmatian90]

Power outages are mostly along the coastal area -- wetter snow builds up on tree limbs, higher winds then inland then hits them breaks the limb, takes out the power lines. Once you're a couple towns in from the shore the power outages drop off dramatically.

 

[flashhole]

We ended up with 8"-10" here in Owego, NY, drifts much deeper. Took me 3 hours to plow out today. First path I plowed was the wood pile to the house.

 

[brenndatomu]

I have them too.. but they are darker.

How could they be darker?! I thought that furnace ate oak and pooped a fresh ocean breeze! :hmm3grin2orange:

 

[brenndatomu]

Yeah, we were supposed to get between 1-2', best I can tell we got about 5-6". Another......STORM OF THE CENTURY!!! Run for the hills, save the wife & kids, trust no one! It's the apocalypse. :msp_scared:

Sounds like the storm we had here in Ohio a month or so ago. One TV weatherguesser was sayin 23" another said 39" we ended up with 6"

 

[beerbelly]

Here is a state by state report.
The Northeast blizzard, state by state

 

[Blazin]

I actually have sympathy for the body shops. Big insurance keeps the labor rate way down around 35/hr while the mechanic shops are getting 100/hr. Tough to make any profit without cutting corners today with a body shop.......

$50/hr here, and that still don't cut it. I'd rather be towing, the last one was $275 for less than a 1/4 mile....and cleanup fee of course, wasn't missing a part :monkey:

 

[Somesawguy]

 

[Ductape]

the last one was $275 for less than a 1/4 mile....and cleanup fee of course, wasn't missing a part :monkey:

Tow
20 minutes waiting time for the police to do their investigation
winch the car 6' before he could get it on the truck
speedy dry / cleanup


Sounds reasonable.....

 

[Bricks]

whats up with all the power outages , i just don't get that. I live in wisconsin and we're always getting storms and snow and I remember ONCE after a big wind storm losing power for about 6 hrs, never for days on end. Outages here are very rare and powers always back in in an hour or two tops. Seems any storm down south or out east and powers off for half million people for days. Guess i could understand a hurricane but not a snow storm. Anyways, that would suck having no power for days.

Here in Wisconsin we let the power company keep trees trimmed away from the power lines.

 

[Dalmatian90]

Here in Wisconsin we let the power company keep trees trimmed away from the power lines.

We let them too.

The municipally-owned electric companies have a fraction of the outages and much shorter duration then the investor-owned utilities.

Comes down to this -- the municipals spend the money at a steady pace and keep replacing their infrastructure as it reaches end of life.

Northeast Utilities and the other private utilities wait for storms to break their worn out ####, then hire out of state crews to repair in mass and file for a rate increase to cover storm damages.

 

[buildmyown]

whats up with all the power outages , i just don't get that. I live in wisconsin and we're always getting storms and snow and I remember ONCE after a big wind storm losing power for about 6 hrs, never for days on end. Outages here are very rare and powers always back in in an hour or two tops. Seems any storm down south or out east and powers off for half million people for days. Guess i could understand a hurricane but not a snow storm. Anyways, that would suck having no power for days.

A large part of that is they dont trim the trees around here mix that with heavy wet snow winds and a lot of people in one area and you get high outage numbers. Most of the outages this time are down on the cape and southcoast near the water. Also one of our power plants had to be shut down so that could be a large part of this one.

 

[deerlakejens]

I believe the reason for the higher number of people without power in the NE is because they have a lot more people than there are in WI, much higher densities. My mom lives just outside of Tomahawk and she still has a couple of outages every year, though most are wind related summer outages, more of an inconvenience than anything.

 

[stihly dan]

How could they be darker?! I thought that furnace ate oak and pooped a fresh ocean breeze! :hmm3grin2orange:

Don't know how to reply to that ??? yet. As some of this snow melts, I am going to have to go up on the roof and do a cleaning. Then I'll see what is in there for soot or ash or CREOSOTE (AGH) That would piss me off. But I can't imagine clear ice from the flue.

 

[Fred Wright]

A large part of that is they dont trim the trees around here mix that with heavy wet snow winds and a lot of people in one area and you get high outage numbers. Most of the outages this time are down on the cape and southcoast near the water. Also one of our power plants had to be shut down so that could be a large part of this one.

'Tis true. Near the coast, heavy snows tend to be wetter and accumulate on trees. The limbs break and in some cases, trees break and take power lines with them. Windy conditions don't help matters. If it was just one or two trees, a short outage would be expected. But when you've got a lot of downed trees and lines, it takes longer to get power restored.

For you folks up in New England, stay warm and safe.

 

[spike60]

Well that went even more spectacularly worse then how bad I thought it would go.

Conclusion after 30 minutes and 20' of progress...twenty feet garden tractor wide, not car wide...

I have a home office, 500' driveway, smidge over 2' of snow, and highs around 40º all week.

I can wait for it to melt.

Guess if I don't have better equipment by the next time, I'll have to plow the whole driveway open a couple times during the storm.

And that my friend is why I refuse to sell anybody a plow for their lawn tractor. I know it costs me a couple of tractor sales every year too. The catelogs all show plows available for even the $999 machines, but the smaller the tractor, the quicker it will "meet it's match" in a snowstorm. The reality is that to have any success at all, the user has to do like you said and go out every several inches. And even then, a small blade on a tractor still can't pile the snow, so you're plowing in an ever shrinking environment. 2 to 3 feet for a snowblower is no problem at all. And it spreads the snow out so that big piles of snow are non-existent.

This storm never hit as predicted here. Only got 9", which was half of what was forecast. Temp really dropped last night though. Only 1 degree here this morning.

 

[Dalmatian90]

And that my friend is why I refuse to sell anybody a plow for their lawn tractor.

*shrug*

It actually does better then I expected -- granted I have a pretty heavy tractor (2000 series Cub Cadet w/hydro transmission), plus weights, plus my ass....it's handled 12" just fine. Which for my area probably averages out to one storm every two years it won't do.

If I had gone out at 10pm and spent two hours to clear the driveway, I would've been fine. Just a strategic mistake from lack of experience with this machine...I knew it would be real tough to clear in the morning, I just didn't realize how impossible it would be!

Not that I'd pass up a snow blower in a moment

 

[Mad Professor]

We let them too.

The municipally-owned electric companies have a fraction of the outages and much shorter duration then the investor-owned utilities.

Comes down to this -- the municipals spend the money at a steady pace and keep replacing their infrastructure as it reaches end of life.

Northeast Utilities and the other private utilities wait for storms to break their worn out ####, then hire out of state crews to repair in mass and file for a rate increase to cover storm damages.

I'll 2nd that. I've seen utility right of ways so overgrown a deer would have a hard time crossing it. Vines growing on the lines, dead trees suspended by more vines.

On roads the dead trees are left to do their carnage rather than taken down in advance. Transformers are left on the pole until they blow.

The phone companies are no better.

P.S. the linemen are great, it's the greedy management that sucks