Logic does not apply to weather here. Ever.
Boy do I ever have a long story for you guys! This is in regards to how and why I have disappeared off the face of the internet since Thursday, right before midnight. Some of you know, but this is going to be a massive blow-by-blow, complete with pictures, tl;dr story of this past weekend.
For those who do not know, I live in Massachusetts. More specifically, north central Worcester County. This past Thursday, a massive storm moved through Massachusetts. The conditions were just right so northern Worcester County was given a literal shit storm of ice. The wind was blowing like crazy too, but I still stuck around on my laptop. Around between 11:45 and 11:50 that night, the power went out. Immediately, I shut down and started feeling around for a flashlight. I figured that like any other storm where the power goes out, we'd have power back by morning. Not so. My mom woke me up at 9:15 that morning to tell me school had called through the emergency alert system to warn staff and students away from campus as crews would be going in to clear out shit from the roads, on top of Fitchburg having no power. Funnily enough, only our wall phone worked. Other than that, no power, no heat, nothing. So I grabbed my dad's boots, my camera, and my keys and went outside to take pictures of some stuff.
First off, my van. Totally covered in ice.
The mass of sticks above my finger are our lilac bushes all bent over from the weight of the ice. However, that is a large branch you see just to the right of them.
Same bushes, same tree, no finger. Turned on its side. :X Tilt head or screen left. Angle was fixed. :|b
The fragment of sticks in the bottom corner is the branch from the two above pictures. In the main shot are branches that fell from our other tree, also in the shot.
So I went a little closer towards the corner of the house. And I looked up to see... a branch that had frozen to the corner of the roof. Nothing else supporting it.
So here's a lovely view down our driveway. Obviously, that branch wasn't there when my dad left for work. Yes ladies and gents, branches kept falling during the day without warning.
And here's some more shots from the driveway area. This is actually the tree at the end of the driveway on the apartment building next door's property. But it sure did drop a lot of its branches. And yes, I do realize I am not photogenic.
And to get an idea of how fucking lucky the Green Monster (my van) got, notice the branches leaking over about a yard away? Same shit that was behind me in the picture above. :|b
Some of my neighbors weren't so lucky, as I found out from a short walk up the street. At the apartment building, a woman with a truck lost her rear view mirror on the driver's side. The rear cab door and some of the bed rail on the passenger side were also dented.
Same apartment building also lost cable. Not like they can do anything with it, even if they were still attached to the building....
Still, managed to get a nice picture leading down the hill and towards the highway and South Gardner.
Of course... I couldn't resist getting a couple pictures from inside my van. Turns out the thing was covered in close to half an inch of ice. XD;;; So... don't mind the dark coloring of the windows.
Moving on from pic spam, I moved the van up to avoid any possible damage as branches were still breaking off and falling. I went back in, only to go back out to charge my cell and scrape off all the ice. Ended up thinking it'd probably be warmer to sleep with the van running all night than in the house. The sad thing is, I think I was right. We found out my grandfather had power and heat where he was, just no phone or cable, but who cares? We drove down and borrowed his shower. As sorely tempting as it was, we ended up going home to "tough it out" in our dark, cold house. It didn't help that my mom had said that the police had said the power would be out for a minimum of 36 hours, but not to expect it back until Monday. I had also gotten a call from work saying they were closing early that day. Didn't really affect me seeing as I wasn't scheduled.
Saturday, there really wasn't anything to eat since it would've had to be cooked, but with no power.... So I just had a glass of orange juice. Around noon, we packed up our stuff and my mom took my brother to our grandpa's house. I was intending to follow, but I took a detour into Leominster to see if work was open, even though I wasn't in until 2:30, another two hours. Wouldn't you know it, they had just gotten the power back on. Since I hadn't eaten yet, I drove across to the market, got some food, and went back to work. Thankfully, I was able to cook up some food in the break room and punched in an hour early since they really needed the help as they were calling in people to work. And I ended up staying until 10pm, when we closed.
This was where the fun started. From earlier that day, one of the guys from lawn and garden had been selling generators and stuff, but with no working registers he got no commission. So when the registers were up again, he was stuck at the register in kids and everyone went there for generator sales with every other cashier on ordered not to sell any of them. The line for generators was insane, as was the resulting crowd at merchandise pickup. People who had been told that they weren't getting generators until the next day were trying to cut in on the supply the truck due in at four was bringing in. However, the weather was holding up the truck and it wouldn't be at the store until 2 or 3 in the morning. One of our managers, a real tough lady, was threatened by close to thirty people and brought near to a breaking point. In the end, our security guys tried to hold the crowd in line and the cops came in and broke them up fast enough. The rest of the night was quiet enough, pretty slow and relatively relaxed seeing as word had flown around the store fast enough that our store manager, Anita, had just been fired the other day for reasons unknown. All that can be assumed was that it was really bad for a manager to be fired right before the holidays.
Moving on, I had all my stuff packed and went to my grandpa's house instead of going home since he at least had power and heat. So I slept there, got out of bed 15 minutes before I had to go to work, still had nothing to eat so I just had more of the poptarts I got the day before when I got to work. Much less of a madhouse but a little more productive.
I got out around seven and went out to Barnes and Noble in an attempt to leech off their wireless. But they wanted to charge me four dollars by credit card for two hours. No. So I drove across the road to McDonald's thinking their wireless was free. Wrong again. They wanted three dollars. So I left for home after finding out that my dad had the generator working. Generator meant power and heat. Something that we otherwise wouldn't have since it's still out all over town.
Another thing I'll mention is that on Friday as I wandered around outside, there would be popping and crackling noises like popcorn and this was followed immediately by more massive branches falling out of the trees either from having too much ice on them or else the ice melting just enough to release already broken branches or something. So I learned quickly that standing under trees is a bad idea. Though after I came home, I kept hearing the same noises that warned of falling branches, but only small pieces of ice and little sticks were falling. Didn't stop me from freaking out every time I heard it. Thankfully, I haven't heard those noises in hours.
And that, my dear f-list, is my story of the 2008 New England ice storm.
For those who do not know, I live in Massachusetts. More specifically, north central Worcester County. This past Thursday, a massive storm moved through Massachusetts. The conditions were just right so northern Worcester County was given a literal shit storm of ice. The wind was blowing like crazy too, but I still stuck around on my laptop. Around between 11:45 and 11:50 that night, the power went out. Immediately, I shut down and started feeling around for a flashlight. I figured that like any other storm where the power goes out, we'd have power back by morning. Not so. My mom woke me up at 9:15 that morning to tell me school had called through the emergency alert system to warn staff and students away from campus as crews would be going in to clear out shit from the roads, on top of Fitchburg having no power. Funnily enough, only our wall phone worked. Other than that, no power, no heat, nothing. So I grabbed my dad's boots, my camera, and my keys and went outside to take pictures of some stuff.
First off, my van. Totally covered in ice.
The mass of sticks above my finger are our lilac bushes all bent over from the weight of the ice. However, that is a large branch you see just to the right of them.
Same bushes, same tree, no finger. Turned on its side. :X Tilt head or screen left. Angle was fixed. :|b
The fragment of sticks in the bottom corner is the branch from the two above pictures. In the main shot are branches that fell from our other tree, also in the shot.
So I went a little closer towards the corner of the house. And I looked up to see... a branch that had frozen to the corner of the roof. Nothing else supporting it.
So here's a lovely view down our driveway. Obviously, that branch wasn't there when my dad left for work. Yes ladies and gents, branches kept falling during the day without warning.
And here's some more shots from the driveway area. This is actually the tree at the end of the driveway on the apartment building next door's property. But it sure did drop a lot of its branches. And yes, I do realize I am not photogenic.
And to get an idea of how fucking lucky the Green Monster (my van) got, notice the branches leaking over about a yard away? Same shit that was behind me in the picture above. :|b
Some of my neighbors weren't so lucky, as I found out from a short walk up the street. At the apartment building, a woman with a truck lost her rear view mirror on the driver's side. The rear cab door and some of the bed rail on the passenger side were also dented.
Same apartment building also lost cable. Not like they can do anything with it, even if they were still attached to the building....
Still, managed to get a nice picture leading down the hill and towards the highway and South Gardner.
Of course... I couldn't resist getting a couple pictures from inside my van. Turns out the thing was covered in close to half an inch of ice. XD;;; So... don't mind the dark coloring of the windows.
Moving on from pic spam, I moved the van up to avoid any possible damage as branches were still breaking off and falling. I went back in, only to go back out to charge my cell and scrape off all the ice. Ended up thinking it'd probably be warmer to sleep with the van running all night than in the house. The sad thing is, I think I was right. We found out my grandfather had power and heat where he was, just no phone or cable, but who cares? We drove down and borrowed his shower. As sorely tempting as it was, we ended up going home to "tough it out" in our dark, cold house. It didn't help that my mom had said that the police had said the power would be out for a minimum of 36 hours, but not to expect it back until Monday. I had also gotten a call from work saying they were closing early that day. Didn't really affect me seeing as I wasn't scheduled.
Saturday, there really wasn't anything to eat since it would've had to be cooked, but with no power.... So I just had a glass of orange juice. Around noon, we packed up our stuff and my mom took my brother to our grandpa's house. I was intending to follow, but I took a detour into Leominster to see if work was open, even though I wasn't in until 2:30, another two hours. Wouldn't you know it, they had just gotten the power back on. Since I hadn't eaten yet, I drove across to the market, got some food, and went back to work. Thankfully, I was able to cook up some food in the break room and punched in an hour early since they really needed the help as they were calling in people to work. And I ended up staying until 10pm, when we closed.
This was where the fun started. From earlier that day, one of the guys from lawn and garden had been selling generators and stuff, but with no working registers he got no commission. So when the registers were up again, he was stuck at the register in kids and everyone went there for generator sales with every other cashier on ordered not to sell any of them. The line for generators was insane, as was the resulting crowd at merchandise pickup. People who had been told that they weren't getting generators until the next day were trying to cut in on the supply the truck due in at four was bringing in. However, the weather was holding up the truck and it wouldn't be at the store until 2 or 3 in the morning. One of our managers, a real tough lady, was threatened by close to thirty people and brought near to a breaking point. In the end, our security guys tried to hold the crowd in line and the cops came in and broke them up fast enough. The rest of the night was quiet enough, pretty slow and relatively relaxed seeing as word had flown around the store fast enough that our store manager, Anita, had just been fired the other day for reasons unknown. All that can be assumed was that it was really bad for a manager to be fired right before the holidays.
Moving on, I had all my stuff packed and went to my grandpa's house instead of going home since he at least had power and heat. So I slept there, got out of bed 15 minutes before I had to go to work, still had nothing to eat so I just had more of the poptarts I got the day before when I got to work. Much less of a madhouse but a little more productive.
I got out around seven and went out to Barnes and Noble in an attempt to leech off their wireless. But they wanted to charge me four dollars by credit card for two hours. No. So I drove across the road to McDonald's thinking their wireless was free. Wrong again. They wanted three dollars. So I left for home after finding out that my dad had the generator working. Generator meant power and heat. Something that we otherwise wouldn't have since it's still out all over town.
Another thing I'll mention is that on Friday as I wandered around outside, there would be popping and crackling noises like popcorn and this was followed immediately by more massive branches falling out of the trees either from having too much ice on them or else the ice melting just enough to release already broken branches or something. So I learned quickly that standing under trees is a bad idea. Though after I came home, I kept hearing the same noises that warned of falling branches, but only small pieces of ice and little sticks were falling. Didn't stop me from freaking out every time I heard it. Thankfully, I haven't heard those noises in hours.
And that, my dear f-list, is my story of the 2008 New England ice storm.