Boom Boom, Out Go the Lights
And the fridge, the internet, and everything else.
Around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, about the time the weather watch beeped on my cell phone, the power went out. I had not been awake long, having tutored online until 2 a.m. the night before, and I never got to open the notification. I had no idea we were under a tornado warning until Frank hooked up the generator around 6:30 that evening. By then, the first warning had ended, and a second tornado watch was issued for the night.
We were one of over 110,000 households without power in West Virginia, but were also fortunate not to have encountered any major damages. The covered propane grill blew over and the hens hunkered down on the front porch. Sun, our blind dog who hates storms, retreated to the back corner of the pantry, and all the world around us became soaking, soaking wet.
I was completely unprepared. No water run in the bathtub for bucket-flushing the toilet, no candles prepared to light, and flashlights scattered hither and yon through the house. So, I put buckets outdoors to gather rainwater, used one flashlight to find all the others, and sat down to deal with a morning that did not include the usual cup of coffee and The New York Times online.
When the first round of storms passed, I ventured outside. Our house doesn’t get much natural light due to the wrap-around porches, and water run-off is an ongoing issue for us and our geography. We certainly don’t want any flows of water to be blocked or backed up. The sun came out, and I sloshed my way up to our “camp,” which I am reclaiming after 10 years of neglect. (Lord, I hate Autumn Olive bushes, and am grateful for my husband’s baby battery-operated chainsaw.) I wanted to see how the water was flowing there, and it was puddling instead, making the entire space a loamy mud pit.
I got caught at the camp by the second round of storms and waited it out in the camp shelter. There’s something about pouring rain in the forest. Because of the trees, it doesn’t exactly pour. It drips and drops and plinks and plops in asynchronous rhythms. I sat in a plastic chair and half-napped, my legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles of my slick, mud-covered boots. My neck and scalp were sticky with sweat, my clothes damp, my hands full of thorns my arms covered with scratches.
The whipping winds of the storm felt lovely, and as crazy as it sounds, the manual labor addressing water flows and thorny bushes left me feeling satisfied and content, despite the mud, the storm, and the scratches. If there had been bedding in the tent I set up in the shelter last week, I would have just crawled in and slept right there. But when the storm passed and the sun peeked out for just a few minutes, I hustled back to the house.
Finding the power still off, I ate some cereal, changed into clean clothes, and then took my nap. Now it’s 1:00 a.m., and I’m wide awake, not only because of the long power-outage nap but because our generator is loud and right outside the bedroom window. What I really want is an Epsom salt bath, but the pump house for the water well is way too far for any reach of the house generator.
I don’t recall ever experiencing a tornado warning before, but I do remember the Derecho storm and the following 18 days without power. I was outside for that storm as well, and we were likewise unprepared. That’s when we bought the generator. I have in mind now to buy another just for the pump house…
The power outage list for WV notes 214 still without power in our county (Gilmer) and about triple that number over the ridgeline in Calhoun. My laptop is plugged into the surge protector that’s plugged into the extension cord that’s plugged into the generator. We’re predicted to be out a total of 60 hours, through today and tomorrow. It might be an inconvenience, but we’ll be perfectly fine.