We had a major front blow through last night in the midst of high winds that at times exceeded 50mph.
Power to our neighborhood was lost around 11:15pm last night and when I called the city garage the dispatcher/operator stated that there were outages all over the city. [The reason I call every time now is about two years ago during a summer storm I didn't call right away and some 1-2 hours into the outage I called to see if there was an estimate on restoration and they didn't even know our neighborhood was out, so now I call right away.] Our power was restored around 2:20am (based on
the clocks in my house).
The awesome part of the storm last night was when the front was coming through town. My 10 year old daughter and I were in the car heading into town on the west side to grab some dinner for my wife and I after picking up my daughter from Upwards practice. As we were driving pass the last church on Stahlhaber Rd./NW Washington Blvd there was a light blue/green glow in that lit up the sky for a few seconds that was distracting enough that I did not see a small branch in the road. Based on the news article I read this morning I am pretty sure that this light was from two poles that carry high voltage lines being snapped by the high wind over by the Freshman School.
However, as we climbed the hill on NW Washington Blvd, (by the model home?) just before coming between Wal-Mart and Lowe’s we both saw another light blue/green glowing ball over in the direction of the power plant by the river that lit up the entire sky for a couple seconds and then went out – when it went out the city seems extremely dark but as we crested the hill and I was surprised to see lights on the businesses on Main street. I called home to see if we still had power and my wife reported that the
lights had dimmed down but didn’t go all the way out. My daughter was lamenting the fact that she didn’t have a camera/camcorder as that light was really cool.
I confirmed with the lady at the Arby’s drive through that they power/lights had just dimmed but not completely gone out. We got our order and continued home, noticing a number of small branches and twigs in the road at various locations.
Once home the power flickered once or twice but it was more of the small surge you have when the A/C kicks in during the summer. The kids freaked out a bit but we got them off to bed (except for the 2 almost 3 year old – who has developed a fear of shadows in the last few weeks). A little bit after 11 there was a quick complete drop that occurred – and I closed up my computer and unplugged it and shut off my external hard drive and I was just about to stand and grab a flashlight when the power went completely out about 11:15 and stayed that way until some time after 2. I woke up about 3 a noticed that we only left one light on that was shining brightly in the living room – I just left it as I didn’t want to rouse the dog and have to step outside.
I really wish I would have had a way to capture that glowing ball of light as it was simply awesome!
Tags: family