Mid Atlantic: Three Million Without Power
July 1st, 2012Via: CBS:
Utility crews untangled downed power lines and tree limbs Sunday, working to get the electricity turned back on for millions of people facing a second day of 100-degree temperatures without modern conveniences like air conditioning and refrigeration.
On Saturday, many people flocked to places like malls and movie theaters in the hope the lights would be on again when they returned home. Utilities were slowly making progress, but more than 3 million people still had no electricity and could only watch their thermostats climb.
It could be several days before all the power outages are restored.
While I live a full 8 hours from D.C., the storm also hit Morgantown, W.by gosh VA. which is about 2 1/2 hours south of my locale in western Pa. The thermoter on my car was at 100 degrees at about 5:00 and then dropped about 5 degrees as I headed north.
We had the darkest sky. Thunder, lightning, and a few drops of rain. It was “dark” at about 8:00 p.m. I saw a lightning while walking Leo the cat (yes I walk him on a halter about an hour a day, have also buried two dead cats killed on the highway this past month, I knew them. My Dad knows I’m infamous for feeding the strays) I digress. The lightning went from west to east and went as far as my eye could see and was PINK!
I’ve spent too much time looking for the AP article that was in the Sharon Herald sports section but it called the stom a derecho (duh-RAY-choch) which is a long-lived straight line storm that sweeps over an area at a high speed. Sometimes I think they make these names up. Who ever heard of basically, a dry wind storm in high heat without rain? Maybe if you lived in the desert but in D.C.?
Anyways, I like this website. I didn’t have the stormy night portrayed here (just got our first rain in two weeks tonight – Yay) but nothing like this.
Cheers All and I hope you all are fine and dandy. Hope you are rolling with it rather than weeping or gnashing your teeth despite the weirdness that seems to pop up everywhere these days.
E
http://www.worldweatherpost.com/2012/06/29/war-of-the-worlds-mcs-drops-38000-lightning-strikes-in-pa/ Friday.
We got hit straight on by this storm in Baltimore (well I’m a bit north of the city but same difference). You know most people complain about their utility companies, but I was rather amazed by BGE’s response time. Our power flickered out a couple times before finally going totally out. Then at 1 AM when the storm had barely even finished passing we got our power back. I know not everyone was that lucky, but being able to get even some of the power flowing again so quickly after a storm like that is amazing. Thank God I don’t have to deal with Pepco in D.C. Those unfortunate people might not have power until next month 🙂
To Eileen: You saw some pink lightning? I swear I saw a couple of flashes that looked greenish. I thought at the time it might be lightning hitting a transponder or electric lines that caused the green flash/after-glow, but who knows. Also some of the stronger flashes seemed to have an overly blueish tone to them. It wasn’t an average lightning storm that’s for sure. Probably the most violent I’ve seen in terms of lightning, there was barely a second that would go by without multiple flashes in the sky. And that lasted for a few hours like that. Seemed like most of it was heat lightning and only a few were actually striking the ground, but when they struck it was loud and powerful.
There was some lightning late last night as well, but I fell asleep instead of staying up and watching it. While I love watching storms, I hope this system passes without much more issue. Otherwise those poor bastards in D.C. will have to get through this heat wave without even a fan to cool them.
About 1:20 into this video, you can see the sky turning orange where it looks like theres a fire off somewhere. Pretty intense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGZs0yX6tb8