Well, as of two hours ago our house was still standing, but the power was not

My apologies for a lack of replies, it hasn't been the best of days.

Wednesday we lost power around 11am, packed up a bunch of stuff including emergency meds, dog food and the dogs, and headed up the mountain. I took the time to shut down my computer and turn off the two UPSes. Outside, it was hella windy! It was also extremely gorgeous! It hadn't snowed a lot, but it was wet enough to stick to the pines, and because the temperature was in the mid 20s and the sky was clouded over, it wasn't going to melt. I really wish I could've stopped and done some shooting, but the wind was gusting so high that it just wasn't safe, so we went down to the library where I'm interning and spent a few hours in my work room/office.

In the basin, it was also hella windy, and there was a ton of dirt in the air - comes from living in the southwest. Moved my computer (an HP touchscreen all-in-the-monitor) to the floor and we had a nice large table. We putzed about until 5:00 when we went for a leisurely dinner, then went and saw the new How To Tame Your Dragon movie. During the afternoon, Russet had found that all three web cams on the main street in Cloudcroft had gone offline, as had the weather station at the high school. So the power failure had spread beyond our street to the rest of the town.

While we were waiting for the movie to start, I pulled up the web page for our electric utility to see if they might have an update on the power outage. They had a list by zip code of their service areas, the number of accounts without power, and the total number of accounts in the zip code. It's been constant for the last 7+ hours at #out = 3423, #served = 3545 for a %out of 96.56%.

*sigh*

We decided the best strategy was to go home, see if it was still intact, grab some clothes and food, then go to the observatory. We'd been in contact with the woman running the 3.5 meter, they'd lost power much earlier in the day and had been on generator power for a long time. And because of the winds, there was no hope of opening. I checked the New Mexico Roads app and as far as I could tell, there would be no problem getting back to Cloudcroft, though the highway to the observatory was labeled risky due to packed snow and ice.

First we fueled up our cars, just in case something bad happened and Alamogordo lost power - power failures do sometimes cascade and grow in area! Then we headed up the mountain.

That, at least, was uneventful. Not even breezy! It was eerie driving through Cloudcroft with no power in town at all. Getting up the last bit of hill to our house had some slips and slides, but we got there in the end. A couple of small trees in our front yard had toppled, no big deal, and it looked like the fence in the back yard was intact. The house was down to 49f from the mid 60s. I set up some small flashlights firing into the ceiling as lanterns and we packed stuff away.

And then I noticed the sound of a UPS chirping in the kitchen area! I knew for certain that I'd turned off my iMac's UPS after I'd powered down the computer. I go and look, and sure enough the UPS is off, yet there's a chirp. Then I remembered that our fiber optic internet connection has its own UPS! That puppy was finally close to being completely discharged and was announcing its unhappiness for all to hear. Sadly, there was nothing that I could do for it.

We're now at the observatory, and I'm heading for bed momentarily, thoroughly exhausted. I don't feel stressed, but I know it's been a stressful day. We have a few days of food, I have five days of some of my meds, and if the power is going to be off for more than another day or so, we'll probably go to Phoenix for a few days.

So the house wasn't destroyed, much to our joy. We're still weather refugees for the nonce, it's happened before, also due to wind knocking power up the mountain. The wind warnings are over, it's currently running about 20-25 MPH gusting to 40, so perfectly manageable.

Thank you for your concern, it is much appreciated. I'll have to dig out my chainsaw and buy some oil and do a little carving soon.

Here's a chart of what the wind was doing at the observatory

I captured this image from the meteorological tower at the observatory, you can see how high and when the wind spiked and also how it dropped off. It's a gorgeous day today, I took a lot of photos of trees partly frosted with snow. Everything's melting even though the temperature is in the 20s as it's quite a clear sky. Fortunately between attacking the ice and the melt, walking around is a lot less treacherous!

Keep in mind that the observatory is 15-20 miles S/SW of Cloudcroft, so we don't know exactly what the conditions were at our house. The storm is called a "Bomb Cyclone" and I think its eye was over Kansas or Nebraska, so we were on the fringe. It derailed a train in New Mexico, fortunately with no injuries, and spawned two tornadoes in the NE corner of the state.

The dogs aren't happy at being cooped up in the car, but it's in the sun, so they'll be warm. Russet is grabbing a nap and plans on taking them for a pre-sunset run, up and down the observatory driveway, which is about a mile. So that should burn off some energy and poop them out a bit. Then we're going back to the house for a few more food items, then down to Alamo to pay somebody to feed us.

Right now I'm doing laundry, something that I was going to do yesterday before we lost power and abandoned our house to its fate. The observatory has two dorm buildings, one with two kitchens and a washer/drier, so I'm taking advantage of the latter equipage. The admin building where the control rooms for the telescopes are also has a kitchen and laundry, but that one is reserved for special items, I don't know what.

And I learned that laundry detergent when left for many hours in a freezing car turns into a gel! Isn't science amazing!

We spoke with Mark, the observatory's site manager, about power restoration. He's tightly tied into emergency services and utilities for the area. He said they expect power to be restored Friday, so we'll be spending another night here, which is doable. The dogs aren't allowed in the admin building because one of the Sloan scientists is severely allergic to dogs, so naturally he's on-shift right now. There's a trailer that's normally used to house dogs on-site, but it's not connected to the site generator, so the dogs were on the cold side last night. That's not too bad for the poodles as they come with their own fur coat, but Rupert suffered some. Russet put his jacket on him, but he managed to partly squirm out of it. Tonight we're putting them in the fabrication shop, which IS connected to the generator, so they'll be warmer tonight.

So lots of fun. I was exhausted last night and didn't get much sleep, but got enough to be functional. So we'll be muddling through. The house is intact without damage and no further threat is in the near future, that's the important part.