So I woke up at 4:30-ish to study for my midterms, and it sounded like the house was about to fall apart. Apparently, winds were ripping through our neck of the woods 80-100 miles per hour! The guy at the supermarket lost his whole fence. Trees whipped around horizontal, and sometime around 5:30 while studying Microbiology, our power went out.
Well, THAT was fun, being wide awake in a spooky, creaky, howling house with a power outage. I'm so spoiled in my 21st century life.
I spent the next half hour lighting candles and discovering that mason jars diffuse the light beautifully through a room.
Next, I got all the kids up at 7, still pitch black in the house, and we got ready for popcorn day at school by candlelight. It took a little while but mostly we felt adventurous. The kids loved it.
By 8:30, I was pretty much over the adventure of it all and wanted my lights back on. The sky had started to lighten up a bit, but still no sun over the mountains. I started hoping that school got canceled as I drove through the north part of town and saw that even the supermarket had lost its power and all was darkened.
Lo and behold, the only lighted building in town was Wolf's elementary school. Which leads me to my next realization, which is that Alaskan schools don't stop for anything. I can think of only one day in the last 3 years when I even heard of a school closing due to weather. Sure enough, Wolf's school was running generators and planning for one half of the students to be in class with the other half (they called it "reading buddies) because there was only enough power for one half of the school.
The wind was INTENSE! It's quite rare to have stormy weather here in our inlet. We got inside long enough to confirm that popcorn day was canceled and our excellent popcorn-passing-out skills were not needed. And back home we went to make our own popcorn and huddle in close with our electricity back on and our spoiled selves feeling warmer and cozier at the end of it all.
Here's a link to some pictures from around town. Bummer about that tree house!
We usually get those really strong winds a couple of times every winter. They're called Chinooks. It's totally weird to have them in OCTOBER though. Usually Chinooks come in December and January and thaw everything out just enough to make a huge mess when it freezes again. I always used to wonder why our hurricane force winds never made national news... :)
ReplyDeleteMe being the way I am, I slept through all the wind and power outages this morning. And in fact, if it wasn't for the "PF" being displayed on the microwave when I got up (at 10:00) I wouldn't have even known there was a power outage...
ReplyDeleteI'm a bum.
I was wondering the same thing, Sarah! Ooh, "Chinook." Great word! :)
ReplyDeleteI know I've seen some information about these things in a cartoon. I want to say it was Brother Bear. Our school close if they even *think* we're supposed to have an ice storm. They don't want people to get trapped at school in bad weather. You Alaskans are just tougher than the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteInteresting (the history of the word "Chinook")...I only think of them as the military helicopters. ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm stealing your traffic feed thingie, btw. I'm nosy too.
I haven't looked into the history...all I know is that it's the Native word for king salmon. I think. And when I say "Native word," that is with full acknowledgement that there are many tribes here and many languages, and I am being nonspecific purely because I have no idea beyond this generic statement. :)
ReplyDelete