In a small boat North Korean Kim Jong Un was out fishing with his entourage
That's an Orca fersure!
So it is a strange cool down here. The forrest i live in is usually teaming with noise making insects this time of year. It has been hot, nearly 90F for weeks. Now a bit chilly, a very damp mid-lower 40's. Very foggy after a bunch of steady/spotty rain, high humidity. Tonight the forrest is eerily quiet, dark, a late waning moon. Not a peep, sounds like dead of winter. Not a squirrel or a cyote, nor even a dog in the distance. Just dark, very quiet, very strange.
Kind of night just to have a few pints and turn in to the fart sack under a blanket.
...
Kind of night just to have a few pints and turn in to the fart sack under a blanket.
...
Actually, yes. The SAAB factory is just 10 miles away and many who worked there leased SAAB cars and bought them when the factory went down the drain.
Warm finally! Mayflower, lily of the valley is "kielo" in Finnish and here it blossoms in June. My daily dogwalk is now seductively perfumed! As well blueberries and wild strawberrys are blossoming now - it's summer!
Singer Maarit Hurmerinta has been one of my favourites since '70s, here she is singing "Delta Dawn" Finnish translation titled "Laakson Lilja" (=kielo)
Laakson Lilja (Remastered) - YouTube
Singer Maarit Hurmerinta has been one of my favourites since '70s, here she is singing "Delta Dawn" Finnish translation titled "Laakson Lilja" (=kielo)
Laakson Lilja (Remastered) - YouTube
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In the dark again. Yesterday afternoon my wife and I were outside mowing the lawn. A lot of rain, wind and possibly hail was expected soon, and we were nearly finished when the wind picked up. I heard a loud crack and a familiar zap-bang of a power line fuse blowing, so I went to investigate. A large branch had been ripped from a tree and it fell across our dirt road and the power lines severing the hot and neutral 7200 volt distribution lines. It also mangled the phone and cable TV lines.
Before we could finish the yard the big rain came. We got over two inches in an hour. This is a typical afternoon storm in Florida, but unheard of here. The creek in the backyard went from nearly dry to flood in the yard in two hours. It continued to rise all night, but is subsiding now.
I called the power company to report lines down at 4 PM, and they said that a crew would be there shortly. About an hour and a half the local VFD showed up and blocked the road. No one in or out until the power company came. Since the fuse had blown, I had already cut the low branches off the tree so that vehicles could pass underneath.
The power company showed up around 6:30. The guy I talked to said that there were outages all over the county and it might be a while before someone could get here.
The outage map on the AEP web site showed 4800 customers without power in a county of 25,000 last night. Our outage showed an estimated restoration time of 9:30 PM last night. It now shows 10 PM tonight.
The rain and wind continued for most of last night, breaking more trees and dropping more lines.
The pictures are from early this morning.
Before we could finish the yard the big rain came. We got over two inches in an hour. This is a typical afternoon storm in Florida, but unheard of here. The creek in the backyard went from nearly dry to flood in the yard in two hours. It continued to rise all night, but is subsiding now.
I called the power company to report lines down at 4 PM, and they said that a crew would be there shortly. About an hour and a half the local VFD showed up and blocked the road. No one in or out until the power company came. Since the fuse had blown, I had already cut the low branches off the tree so that vehicles could pass underneath.
The power company showed up around 6:30. The guy I talked to said that there were outages all over the county and it might be a while before someone could get here.
The outage map on the AEP web site showed 4800 customers without power in a county of 25,000 last night. Our outage showed an estimated restoration time of 9:30 PM last night. It now shows 10 PM tonight.
The rain and wind continued for most of last night, breaking more trees and dropping more lines.
The pictures are from early this morning.
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Sounds like a good Generad storyline for me
I remember one time we had a t-storm pass thru at work, the lighting hit a power line running to what else, the old Motorola semi building. We saw it thru the big windows. The 3 phase line hit the ground sparking away were it hit the ground jumping along til the it run out of line at the pole. It was on the out side because if it was one the inside one it would have taken out a row of cars in the lot just underneath. Not one of mine There was a bunch of glass globes at the bottom of the pole. Electricity in action, back to our design work, boring LVolt digital stuff
Twister hit just north of Montreal yesterday, in a residential area, I think someone lost their life.
it will be a cool 16C high here today, welcome relief, on go the pants and sweat shirt for the day.
gardens are rocking, flowers on the roma tomatoes, ouside the cages, beans getting close to flower, skunk #1 fem about 4' already, bring it on.
Stay safe.
I remember one time we had a t-storm pass thru at work, the lighting hit a power line running to what else, the old Motorola semi building. We saw it thru the big windows. The 3 phase line hit the ground sparking away were it hit the ground jumping along til the it run out of line at the pole. It was on the out side because if it was one the inside one it would have taken out a row of cars in the lot just underneath. Not one of mine
There was a bunch of glass globes at the bottom of the pole. Electricity in action, back to our design work, boring LVolt digital stuff Twister hit just north of Montreal yesterday, in a residential area, I think someone lost their life.
it will be a cool 16C high here today, welcome relief, on go the pants and sweat shirt for the day.
gardens are rocking, flowers on the roma tomatoes, ouside the cages, beans getting close to flower, skunk #1 fem about 4' already, bring it on.
Stay safe.
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A power crew appeared about an hour ago. They put jumpers to ground on all the downed lines and left.
A crew of chain saw operators are out there now dicing and slicing. I pointed out a large dead tree near the 7200 volt line that feeds all of this area. They said that they were only there to fix, not prevent messes, and couldn't touch it. After a BS session with the guy that never got out of his truck (obviously the supervisor) he got the chain saw guys to take down the top half of the dead tree.
The linemen will return sometime this afternoon to fix the lines.....maybe.
The Motorola plant where I worked had a priority power feed with it's own sub-station with two different inputs, similar to a hospital. It was a rare day for the power to go out at Mot. We had the very destructive hurricane Wilma in 2006 where our house power was out for 22 days. The Mot plant was dark for 4 days and remained closed for 3 more until a crew deemed that it was safe to resume operations. The first week of reopening looked like it does now, nobody there. Since most roads were still impassable and there was no gasoline or traffic lights nobody could get to work. All cellular and most wireline phones were out, so nobody knew that the plant was open. I got daily updated over the Motorola ham station. It had backup power and an indoor antenna for the 2 meter repeater. I lived 3 miles from the plant, so I could walk or bicycle to work. The plant had air conditioning, my house didn't, so I went to work.
In a totally different weather VS Motorola story, in the morning of 1977 it snowed in south Florida for the first and only time ever recorded. The plant bosses came over the PA system and granted a 15 minute break for people to go outside and see the snow. I worked the night shift at the time so I was at home and slept through it.
Remembering Jan. 19, 1977, the day it snowed in South Florida - South Florida Sun Sentinel - South Florida Sun-Sentinel
A crew of chain saw operators are out there now dicing and slicing. I pointed out a large dead tree near the 7200 volt line that feeds all of this area. They said that they were only there to fix, not prevent messes, and couldn't touch it. After a BS session with the guy that never got out of his truck (obviously the supervisor) he got the chain saw guys to take down the top half of the dead tree.
The linemen will return sometime this afternoon to fix the lines.....maybe.
The Motorola plant where I worked had a priority power feed with it's own sub-station with two different inputs, similar to a hospital. It was a rare day for the power to go out at Mot. We had the very destructive hurricane Wilma in 2006 where our house power was out for 22 days. The Mot plant was dark for 4 days and remained closed for 3 more until a crew deemed that it was safe to resume operations. The first week of reopening looked like it does now, nobody there. Since most roads were still impassable and there was no gasoline or traffic lights nobody could get to work. All cellular and most wireline phones were out, so nobody knew that the plant was open. I got daily updated over the Motorola ham station. It had backup power and an indoor antenna for the 2 meter repeater. I lived 3 miles from the plant, so I could walk or bicycle to work. The plant had air conditioning, my house didn't, so I went to work.
In a totally different weather VS Motorola story, in the morning of 1977 it snowed in south Florida for the first and only time ever recorded. The plant bosses came over the PA system and granted a 15 minute break for people to go outside and see the snow. I worked the night shift at the time so I was at home and slept through it.
Remembering Jan. 19, 1977, the day it snowed in South Florida - South Florida Sun Sentinel - South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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When I was working in Kansas City, we had a guy from south California working with us.
It snowed a lot one night - he loved it - had never seen the stuff before. The rest of us were just annoyed - digging to do...
Here, they try and be pre-emptive about trees and power lines. At least once a year they fly a chopper along the route, checking for stuff getting close, then come back and cut where needed...
It snowed a lot one night - he loved it - had never seen the stuff before. The rest of us were just annoyed - digging to do...
Here, they try and be pre-emptive about trees and power lines. At least once a year they fly a chopper along the route, checking for stuff getting close, then come back and cut where needed...
If pigs fly, the supplier may regret it.
In Maine, especially the south, people are getting tired of the power going out. Sometimes wind, though a lot of it is jeeps. So tired that they are talking about confiscating the utility equipment and working it as a state co-op.
This plan works in one US state. But the general history of utility companies is that farmer co-ops get behind on repairs and upgrades, got bust, get taken-over by Big Hydro, who then gets eaten by Foreign Investors. (In north Maine, the Canadians bought our wires from the Spanish.)
The odds of Maine nationalizing our wires is like pigs flying. But if we do, it started with not trimming the trees.
Short little getaway in Whistler BC this week; 28c with mostly clear skies, light breeze, matching summer wear, and some amazing body art - not that an almost septuagenarian should be noticing or commenting on such.
All kidding aside, this is a super naturally beautiful part of the province, and we lucked out big time on COVID room rates; even having had to reschedule twice for personal reasons, the hotel still honoured pricing from reservations made in March.
All kidding aside, this is a super naturally beautiful part of the province, and we lucked out big time on COVID room rates; even having had to reschedule twice for personal reasons, the hotel still honoured pricing from reservations made in March.
The setup in UK is equally confusing. The National grid schlep the HT stuff around, but each region has a DNO (Distribution Network Operator) to handle the messy lower voltage stuff. For my region it's Scottish and Southern electricity which at least on the surface is a UK company. But the national grid (which was originally govt owned) is owned by an international consortium, including australia and china. And oddly operates in the US as well.
All fabulously complicated and just shouldn't work, but it hangs together.
All fabulously complicated and just shouldn't work, but it hangs together.
You deserve better. Even my one neighbor gets 21,000V delivered near his house. When a tree hits, it burns off. (But because he's just one house at nominal 1.5A load, the street fuse blows too.)
How about a 765,000 volt line? Replacing metal spacers from a helicopter?
Warning: dizzying heights and ultra fish-eye lens:
Spacer Installation on 765,000 volt line - YouTube
We had no power when we left the house around 4 PM. Everything was fixed when we returned around 7:30 PM.
We are only about a mile as the birds fly from the power plant, and the coal mine that feeds it. There is a 765 KV "transmission station" on the coal mine property that feeds the power transmission lines that run off toward Pittsburgh. One of Sherri's relatives had keys to the property to go hunting. I remember walking on the ground near it in the winter and feeling uneasy and slightly disoriented. The place had a 60 Hz hum to it so that the deer couldn't hear you sneaking around. It was a popular hunting spot.
There are lower voltage lines coming out of the power plant that go past us to a substation where the 7200 volt lines come from. One of those lines (only a single phase) comes back to our area of about 50 customers. That line gets split to three separately fused lines and one of them comes here. We have a transformer in our front yard that serves two houses and a mobile home. Other than outages caused by falling trees and rotting 50+ year old poles, the service is pretty good. We did get them to replace a few bad poles when we moved here including the one in the picture. Now in summer I get about 122 to 124 volts and it usually drops about half a volt or less when the AC starts up. Its a bit lower in winter when everybody has their heat cranked up, but I have never seen it below 120 volts. The THD is often lower than 3%. I used to get 7 to 10% in Florida.
Most of the poles here run randomly across the countryside to service the farms present when the area was powered. Many of them are 50 to 60 years old. AEP will replace rotten ones if you bring it to their attention.
Comcast however will not. This pole rotted off at the ground line over a year ago. They just hung the top half in a tree and left it that way. This storm has left a few more of their poles leaning.
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