coping with snow-induced power outages

so, first off, in case you’re wondering why a snow storm (or any storm, for that matter) always seems to result in a power outage, allow me to explain. this is where we live: that is the view from my front door. we live in the woods. HUGE fir trees, weighed down with very heavy snow, and see those power lines? yup. they’re up on poles, not buried underground, which would be a logical place for them, out in the woods like this. at any rate, big limb, falling or leaning, or otherwise causing problems with the power lines = broken lines, blown transformers, thousands of people without power… you get the gist.

so most of the people in my neighborhood have generators. most of them got their generators after the big wind storm in 2006. that was before we moved out here to the woods. we lived in civilization then, and were out for 4 days. out here, I think they lost power for something like 2 weeks. crazy.

at any rate, we don’t have a generator… it’s on the list.

but, we do have a wood burning stove, and a camp stove, some flashlights, a camping lantern, and lots of candles.

so we cooked hot dogs, campfire style (my absolute FAVORITE) for dinner.

and used the camp stove to boil water for coffee. look at my good son, out there in the cold, babysitting the camp stove.layla spent a lot of time, out playing in the snow, but when she came in all cold and wet, we had to dry out all the snow clothes by the fire. glad I have this drying rack! also, once the water was hot, it the stove did a good job of keeping it that way. so I had a constant flow of hot tea all day. which was great. the wood stove does a good job of heating 1 room, when there’s no electricity to run the fan, so I sat near the fire (so did the cat) most of the day. of course, the snow bird needed some hot chocolate to help her warm up, so we heated some milk on the camp stove too. and, she was super excited to realize that her leapster runs on batteries, not electricity, so she could have a little electronic stimulation! LOL! after awhile, I started to get concerned about stuff in the fridge. no worries though, we have a cooler on the back deck… it’s called snow. and last, but not least, the all important task of charging the cell phone! I just chiseled my way into the car, turned it on, and left it running about 30 minutes to juice up my phone. thankfully, the longest our power was out was about 14 hours. we had a few other 1-2 hour outages. nothing major, just enough to be annoying.