{"id":6772,"date":"2012-06-30T17:41:22","date_gmt":"2012-06-30T21:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=6772"},"modified":"2012-06-30T17:41:22","modified_gmt":"2012-06-30T21:41:22","slug":"about-last-night-in-which-i-am-powerless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2012\/06\/30\/about-last-night-in-which-i-am-powerless\/","title":{"rendered":"About last night: In which I am powerless"},"content":{"rendered":"

So there I was at 9:00 p.m. last night , once the 100-degree temperatures of the day had dropped to the 91 degrees of twilight, watering our recently planted thujas in the hopes they’d survive what now seemed an Arrakis-like environment, when there was a flash of light, and eventually thunder. <\/p>\n

What was this? I’d known nothing of an approaching Friday night storm, but just in case it was only a tease, I finished watering the four thujas\u2014the count from light to sound told me any storm was still 13 miles away\u2014and then I checked online.<\/p>\n

Where I discovered that we had a 70% chance of a severe thunderstorm within the hour, with heavy rains, hail, and winds reaching 70 miles per hour threatened. So I didn’t bother doing any other watering beyond those saplings, but instead settled on a couch in the living room, looking forward to reading John Scalzi’s Redshirts<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And then the storm began. And then the lights went out. And then the heavens really<\/em> opened. <\/p>\n

And then we heard a tree come down.<\/p>\n

After an hour, it all subsided to a standard rainstorm. And in the morning, this is what we found.<\/p>\n

First, the view on the street. This is what you would have seen had you come to visit us, as a neighbor’s tree dropped and closed the road.<\/p>\n

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Here’s what now blocks the driveway, preventing you from reaching our front door.<\/p>\n

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Here’s what came down in our front yard.<\/p>\n

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And here’s a tree in the backyard that broke about 25 feet up its trunk, nearly smashing our birdbath when it fell.<\/p>\n

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We ended up with all or part of around eight trees down. Luckily, none hit the house. <\/p>\n

There was<\/em> a casualty, however\u2014one tree toppled and took out a bench, shattering it. <\/p>\n

Imagine yourself sitting here …<\/p>\n

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The power’s been out 20 hours now, and I’m posting this from a cybercafe in the next state. There’s no estimate of when power might be restored. I’ve heard it might take as long as a week<\/em>! <\/p>\n

If so, that means I’ll be back here on Monday, putting in a 12-hour workday, which while convenient, will be far from comfortable. <\/p>\n

Currently, 18,344 of the 53,215 households in Berkeley County are without power. Let’s hope those numbers shift drastically over the next 24-36 hours. <\/p>\n

Or at least shift by one<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So there I was at 9:00 p.m. last night , once the 100-degree temperatures of the day had dropped to the 91 degrees of twilight, watering our recently planted thujas in the hopes they’d survive what now seemed an Arrakis-like environment, when there was a flash of light, and eventually thunder. What was this? I’d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}