Tag: no electricity

Woodpecker, Wind, and Want of Power

The day started with a rapid metallic rat-a-tat-tat. I froze and listened. Rat-a-tat-tat, like miniature gunfire. Or something much more impressive.

Hairy woodpecker on roof, 9:09 a.m., 25 July 2022. Sadly, the photograph does not capture through the window’s screen the bird’s coloration, including the red mark at the back of its head, showing that the bird is male.

I tiptoed to the window and peered through the tulle curtain. There it was. Long toes, red cap, narrow sharp beak. A woodpecker. I was surprised to see it sitting on the metal porch roof, not a common place for a male hairy woodpecker to pause. I drew my head back because I did not want to scare it off. Could I get a video of it?

Rat-a-tat-tat.

Drat. I missed seeing him drum on the metal. I hope his wrap-around tongue provides a good enough cushion for pounding on the hard substance.

I leaned forward once more, setting the curtain to swaying, and he flew off, dipping slightly and two other winged shapes darted away from below the porch roof. I was not sure if the three were all woodpeckers, but it made sense. They were all headed in the same direction, and the flash of tail color was similar. 

Was the metallic drumming a way to signal to the other two?

How strange to see three woodpeckers not in the trees when I so rarely hear much less see one when I’m out walking trails.

Chirping brought me to another window. Birds were darting in and out of the ground vegetation, pecking on the chopped wood, swirling through the air. A couple (at different times) hit the windows. Ouch. I peeked downwards, hoping I would see them fly away or at the very least first stumble then fly. I felt blessed that so many birds had chosen my yard to stop on their way to their next destination. The family of grey jays that occasionally visit whirled around near a spruce tree. I noticed but did not wonder too much about the birds each flying relatively close to the ground. None winged halfway up a tree much less touched the treetops. Gliding and soaring were also seemingly not in their repertoire this morning.

Five hours later I started to understand why: The winds started trying to push the trees onto their sides.

There was not a bird in sight or within hearing. They had all wisely found other places to be. The winds swirled in the treetops, sending broken branches aloft and littering the air and ground with twigs, needles, cones, and leaves. Dust devils churned and gusts of winds caused dry soil to move along the ground like mist across low waves. My wind chimes played musically and at times manically. The clouds swelled and undulated, slowly rolling out curved, stretched, and bulging shapes in every grey shade. The wind rattled the treetops and snapped the weak.

A fat trunk crashed on to a main road, and vehicles stopped so their people could chunk the shattered pieces to the other side of the sidewalk. A couple people in jeans, a woman in a spaghetti string tank top and shorts, and a woman in a flowing garment and a head scarf all worked in busy coordination to clear the street. By the time I drove down the other side of the road from the three vehicles, the road was littered only with some remaining chunks of bark and broken off twigs in a brown chalk-line shadow reaching over nearly three lanes. The drivers and riders climbed back into their vehicles.

Earlier in the day, I headed to a cafe for breakfast later than I had planned. I wished I had arrived early so I could have been ahead of the wildfire hotshot crew and had asked the cashier to put their coffees on my credit card. Working 21 days on/three days off all summer long, they had flown up to Alaska to help out the local crew. As it was, the last man was collecting his coffee as I walked up to order.

Now, here too, I had arrived too late to help.

Due to the winds, my house had lost power by 5 pm., when I returned from the day’s errands. By seven o’clock, a dead, needle-less spruce had taken out three lines, which draped across the dirt road, the only vehicle exit my house has. I was grateful that someone had placed a road emergency triangle as a warning, yet was displeased that the property owner had not cleared away the trees as is their responsibility. I checked the service drop leading to my house in case I was being hypocritical. 

Zoom in to see the shattered fallen tree on the left and the still-attached-to-the-pole lines draping across vegetation on the right. Note the thick storm clouds swirling above, 25 July 2022.

Yep, all clear since my last tidy-up. There is one alder that has sprouted up surprisingly fast and so sometime this week or next I need to chop it down. It is directly under the power line and in a year or two will be able to touch it. So, technically, I admit: I haven’t maintained the 4-foot-wide path (ground-to-sky clearance) after all. Better to take care of it (safely) this summer.

The camera lens captured the sunset more brightly than the naked eye, giving a heartening light to the heavy, swirling storm clouds, 20:43, 25 July 2022.

All of my friends told me via texts that they had to eat their ice cream to keep it from melting…

A loud honking from my phone startled me. I flipped it over and read:

This was when I started to feel a little scared. Not because of the unreachable 911 system (because now I know to call the department I might need directly — I still have phone books in my house! Yay, old school!), but because the 911 dispatch system was not getting electricity. If it wasn’t, then what other important facilities could go down?

If there was a time for a criminal to commit crime, now would be the time.

At 22:38 I received another honk-alarm notification saying the 911 system was back online and people were NOT to call 911 to test the system. Really? People would do that? Yes, of course they would. And some probably still would even after receiving the alert. Sigh…

I heard a bird chirp, although it could have been a squirrel squeak. The first wildlife sound since the birds dropped to safer ground. 

22:58 The house clicks and whirrs. I forget how loud electricity is until it comes back on after a power outage. No wonder people are hesitant about being out in the world without the familiar electric sounds. Wind continues to stir the air. The sounds turn off, then pop back on. So far, they seem to be on for good. A good end to the day for me.

Hopefully the others will soon have a good night, too.

Here is a screen shot of Golden Valley Electric Association’s outage page at 23:25, 25 July 2022. 26,127 customers still affected by outages. The crews have their work cut out for them!

Ice-Rain Black Out

Rain sheets from the sky just before noon on an abnormally warm winter day. On Christmas Eve the temperature had dropped to -24ºF/-31ºC (with a high of 2ºF/-16ºC), and today the thermometer registered a high of 40ºF/4.4ºC. What a layer of ice that is going to make on the roads! Photo taken at 11:57, 26 December 2021.

4:13 p.m. Clickety-click. Click. The lights pop off. Back on. Then off again. Click, clickety-click, say the electronics as juice reaches their systems again. I shut off the treadmill’s main switch and turn off the small light in the living room. The lights flicker on and off and on again until, in the end, they stay off.

I should have guessed that today there would be electricity problems. I first noticed the rain mid morning. The sound of it on the snow was a relaxing susurration, but icicles had already started forming around the base of my truck and along the underside of telephone and power wires.

Rain should not be falling in December in Alaska, especially after a week and a half of regular snowfall. The man who plows my driveway was here on the 8th, 11th, 17th, 19th, 20th, 23rd, and even early on Christmas Day! That was only yesterday.

The snow kept on falling. I woke up at about 2 a.m. this morning because his son was shoveling snow off my stoop while he plowed the drive. I was surprised to hear him here so early (and again), but there was enough snow to warrant yet another visit. He must also have known about the predicted rainfall. My driveway is thick once again with white and with the rain on top… Plowing a thick snow layer with a hardened crust must tear up snowplow equipment. I hope he’s staying at home and off the roads today. They must be sheathed in ice.

Even though the camera does not visually pick up the drops, listen to the water streaming from sky and roof, 12:31, 26 December 2021.
Icicles have formed on the telephone wire due to the abnormal rain, 13:01, 26 December 2021.

Just like everything else — including the power lines and the spindly spruce trees.

The last time there was winter rain was about five or six years ago. I cannot remember the exact year, but I do recall that it happened just before Thanksgiving and the trees bent under the weight of the ice and pulled down power lines. A couple of coworkers who lived further out of town had no electricity for up to two weeks(!) that time.

Kerosene Lantern: Perfect light for a black-out, 15:19, 26 December 2021.

Today, by the light of my hurricane lamp, I pull my headlamp from my backpack and locate the phone book to look up the number for the power company. When there is no internet, an “old-fashioned” book will never let me down. I call in my personal power outage and pull on a sweater. 

Friends and I text to check in on who has power and who is safe. One friend is cozying under blankets. One friend, with power, says I can come over if I feel safe enough to drive. Another friend, also with power, tells me that the official outage map shows 14,000 homes without electricity from Healy to Fairbanks in one direction and to Harding Lake in the other. A lot more than 14,000 people live in that number of homes, including her daughter’s and nieces’ families (and me).

This screenshot shows the electrical outages in Fairbanks, Alaska at 20:04, after my own lights had popped back on, 26 December 2021.

As I sit here typing I realize that many people who are ensconced in their own, full-electricity, worlds may not understand the dangers of living in Alaska without power.

The boiler will not flame on until the electricity is restored, and the water pump will not work either, which will perhaps work to my advantage because if the electricity does not come on before the outdoor temperature starts to drop this evening, I may need to drain the water out through the pipes so if my house freezes there will be less risk of bursting pipes. Of course, I will shut off the pump’s breaker on the panelboard anyway if I have to take that step.

Most, like me, do not have a built-in alternate source of heat. I would love a fireplace or wood stove, but installing one would be too time- and cost-intensive for the kind of home I have. If the indoor temperature becomes too low I will dig a path into the shed to pull out the space heater and the tank of propane so I can stay warm enough this evening to monitor the house and get a restless sleep.

My Internet service is of course down at home, so I cannot access news on the computer. I have no Internet access through my phone, other than Wi-Fi services, which of course are currently reacting as if they were never invented. I opted not to install a landline in this house once I learned that all of the telephone company’s services are fully digital, meaning that when power goes out, so does my landline. Thus, once my cell phone dies I will have no way to call if I need emergency services — and I won’t be able to know if friends will need help either.

In the light of the steady glow of a kerosene lantern, the only light source around, 15:46, 26 December 2021.

The radio also naturally does not work. My mother sent me my 1990s ‘boom box’ last summer so I do have its battery-operated option for the radio if I need it, but I’m kind of enjoying the quiet without a backdrop of an electric hum.

The benefit of the rain — if I put a positive spin on it — is that the temperature is relatively warm. The thermometer outside my front door reads 32ºF, which makes sense because the sky air temperature must be above freezing for it to even rain. The house will hold its temperature so much better than it would have done eleven days ago when there was a negative sign (-) in front of that number.

I mull over the idea of driving to my friend’s house, or to see if a coffee shop is open so I can plug in my phone and have a warm meal. The rain is still sprinkling. The rain has soaked through, making the snow too wet to sweep, as I would normally have done. So, I shovel it off instead. The most recent snowfall has created a ground layer as deep as the bottom step is tall.

Water is dripping down the side of my truck, from the rain as much as from the warming-up truck. I do like autostart. The thick blanket of snow, heavy now with moisture, has started to slide off of the hood in broken-off slabs.

The crusted snow crunches loudly under my feet. I can still push the long snow brush along the top of the truck, and the loose snow falls off the other side. The hardened crust is a roof to the hollowed out snow tunnel I have made. 

The water that seeped through the snow has begun to set into ice atop the snow hard packed from repeated pressure of driven tires. Shoveling the snow away from front and back of each tire will help prevent little mounds of iced snow from turning into chocks and thwarting me driving the truck (which has happened before! I once had to chop away at the ice with the edge of a shovel in order to get moving again.) Photo taken at 17:21, 26 December 2021.

After the truck is cleaned off and the windows and headlights scraped clean of ice and slush, it’s time to shovel out the wheels. I do this already knowing that I’m not going to head over to my friend’s. The icy layer atop the driveway’s snow glistens too prettily for a safe drive.

A conical pile has developed around the fill pipe to my heating oil tank. If more snow falls, or falls from the roof above, the pipe might be buried, and if the wet snow freezes over night, I wonder if the fuel truck driver, slated to arrive tomorrow, will be able to access it. Plus, I want to reduce the chance for snow and water to dribble inside. I punch through the iciness around the pipe and smoothly brush away the light snow beneath.

Natural light, minus all born of electricity, makes it too dark to see much of my self-portrait, but this is me, wearing a brimmed hat and winter coat, with a plaid scarf wrapped aboout my nose and shoulders, 17:19, 26 December 2021.

5:30 p.m. My cell phone’s battery just died.

What time will the electricity come back on?

What to do for dinner…? I’m a little peckish, but I’m sure that I don’t actually need to eat. In 2020, 66.7% of adult Americans were overweight or obese to some degree, and surely that number hasn’t reduced much since then. I can go without food until breakfast. Then, again, there is a sense of exciting adventure to having to cook dinner at home on a camp stove.

I set everything up outside, in part because I hear tales of people who perished because they used propanes stoves indoors (although most likely in smaller square footage and more than just one meal), but mostly because I don’t often get to to sit out on the deck in winter — certainly not at these warm temperatures! It’s too bad the clouds block the starlight.

While I stare into the night and listen to its silence, the water starts to heat up in pot. Bundled up in the camp chair the only sounds are the steady whooshing of the blue flames and the intensifying, but muted roil of the liquid.

6:47 p.m. The blue tinted landscape turns a dirty golden as the light on the house across the road bursts on. I can hear the purr of the boiler from the back of my house. I reenter, turn on the stove to boil water for tea, and plug in the phone, which lights up showing 69%. Replying to texts is the next thing I do in case people were worried about why I had stopped in the midst of conversations. A wise friend asked if I have a charger in my truck. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? 

Probably because I was not too concerned at that moment about being device-less. It’s nice to enjoy the view without the hum or beeps of electricity.

Clickety-click. Click.

Two straining flickers and the lights shut off again. The boiler is silent. The cell phone rings.

The power company’s automated services asks if I have had my power restored, and I press 2 for no.

6:51 p.m. I start the truck’s engine and use the charger to boost the phone’s battery up to 100% before returning to the porch and its camp chair. I eat the yummy re-hydrated chicken breast and mashed potatoes with a bread knife and a long-handled spoon while I try to soak up the grey night.

7:23 p.m.  The bulbs brighten and the lights stay on this time, and while I am relieved that I don’t have to worry about the house, I am a little disappointed that I cannot continue enjoying the quiet of the true world. Someone opens a front door and I hear the chatter of a television show through the night. I retreat indoors, closing my own door behind me, and in a matter of minutes, I can, regrettably, barely remember the feel of a natural nightfall.