Power has been out since 2am, and the cable(TV|internet) is out as well. It’s times like this I’m glad I can “tether” my cellphone to the computer and get internet access that way. It’s painfully slow by modern standards (56k dial-up) but it works even when the power’s out.
The region of Ike’s eye just went by a little while ago. We were near the western edge of it, according to the weather radar. Winds died down somewhat and we were able to get the dogs to go outside and drain themselves. Now the wind is picking up again as it heads north.
Fortunately, our house (as far as we can tell without close examination) seems to be intact. At least, there are no streams of water leaking in or trees sticking through a wall or shards of glass all over the floor. The yard’s not so lucky though – large sections of trees are everywhere, and several sections of the useless “rustic” ranch fence that surrounds the back yard are crushed. Maybe the homeowner’s association will let us put up a real fence now.
We should now have another 6-8 hours of slowly diminishing strong winds to sit through, and then the worst of it should be over. Hopefully it won’t take too long after that for them to get power restored – it’s kinda hot in here. Meanwhile, we’ll just sit and watch the wind playfully ripping chunks of tree loose and flinging them to the ground.
There ought to be some interesting things to see around the lake once the wind dies down enough for it to be safe to go paddling around again.
And now I’m signing off for a bit while I’ve still got some battery power left. Probably more updates later…
Glad to hear you’re alright. I figured you would be, but it’s nice to have that confirmed. A shame that now you’ll have to spend your weekend cleaning up the yard, though.
Be sure to call your homeowner insurance agent before you clean up the mess, especially the fence as it may be covered. Do take some pictures of your back yard with the mess.
I’m a little bummed there was nowhere near enough rain to flood the front yard so I could get a picture of myself paddling around the house. No, we had to get WIND instead.
Apparently “99%”(!) of all of our power company’s Texas customers is without power right now. I have no idea how long it’ll take them to get off their butts and get things fixed.
You’d think after going through this a few times they’d put some effort into actually “hardening” the system against severe weather instead of letting it all fail and then begging for permission to add a new “Hurricane Cost Recovery Fee” to everyone’s electric bills…
(Not that I’m cynical or anything…)