Hurricane Irene AAR

 

It looks like we made it through Hurricane Irene OK.  Last night we started getting heavy rain and high winds.

Power for a good chunk of my neighborhood went out around midnight last night but was restored between 0930 and 1000 this morning. That lasted for about 45 minutes and it went out again. It was restored after about another hour.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll stay up but we still have some high wind gusts, so I won't be shocked if it goes out again.

This morning when I called PECO to report the outage I got a recorded message indicating that they are experiencing very high call volumes and to call back later.

I finished my preps before the storm, including putting some extra water bottles (about 2/3 full) in the freezer, and a bunch in the refrigerator, to help keep them cool in the event of a power outage.  I already store water in empty cleaned 2L soda bottles, plus I filled the 7 gallon jug I take camping.

We made sure that all of our cell phones, iPods, and other rechargeable items were charged ahead of time, but I forgot my Yaesu VX-5 handheld 2m/70cm amateur radio, so that's currently out in my truck charging. I did confirm that the 12v outlet-to-Powerpole adapter works when connected to my Powergate, which is fed from my 70AH gel cell.