Hurricane Isaias

[powderfreak]

A former Lift Ops guy up here who now lives down in CT had a tree hit his truck as he was pulling out of a parking space yesterday.

Just a couple frame grabs from his quick vid.... South Windsor I think it was. 

[weatherwiz]

31 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

They can’t get out until the trees are removed from the wires. That’s the issue. The amount of trees still on wires and roads closed tells you all you  need to know. Gonna be a long one 

Interesting b/c when I was listening to the radio earlier...I could be wrong here but I thought there was somebody on talking about the damage photos and from what it looked like there were not a ton of pics showing trees mangled in wires. 

[CoastalWx]

Sounds like they did not preposition which is what I mentioned earlier. These guys will prep and usually call other utilities to help. Maybe that didn’t happen. Either they did not believe the forecasts, or they did not get a good forecast from their provider.

[weatherwiz]

Just now, CoastalWx said:

Isn’t the town supposed to clear up the trees? We had that town come in and take a bunch of trees out today in the hood.  

I believe so. Each town's DPW I think is responsible. I saw alot of that going on in Branford...especially last night when heading home. Even saw some along highway today

[DavisStraight]

Im surprised at what you guys pay for electric in Connecticut, takes me two months of running the AC to get a bill you guys get in a month.

[CoastalWx]

Just now, weatherwiz said:

I believe so. Each town's DPW I think is responsible. I saw alot of that going on in Branford...especially last night when heading home. Even saw some along highway today

The guys here are pretty good. In the damage capitol of Plymouth county, they are out in full force after the storm. Half the town of Norwell just to my SE lost power and almost all back I think. That’s a heavily forested town too. 

[weatherwiz]

1 minute ago, CoastalWx said:

The guys here are pretty good. In the damage capitol of Plymouth county, they are out in full force after the storm. Half the town of Norwell just to my SE lost power and almost all back I think. That’s a heavily forested town too. 

Just goes to show how much can get done with the right preparations and a little organization. I mean the day after the storm...ES really didn't have much to say. Instead of providing a plan it was "blame the weather forecasts" exactly like 2011. The message was "we need to assess". That is totally fine...obviously you need to assess a situation after it occurs, but you should already have plans and strategies in place..that's what emergency management is for. 

[CoastalWx]

1 minute ago, weatherwiz said:

Just goes to show how much can get done with the right preparations and a little organization. I mean the day after the storm...ES really didn't have much to say. Instead of providing a plan it was "blame the weather forecasts" exactly like 2011. The message was "we need to assess". That is totally fine...obviously you need to assess a situation after it occurs, but you should already have plans and strategies in place..that's what emergency management is for. 

I mean to be fair, the whole state of CT is impacted so it plays a role. I just wonder if they were prepared. I was at a town EMA meeting for Norwell. I know the fire chief who is a huge weenie, and he invited me to this meeting as an expert in the weather. It was more for climate change, but whatever. I gave my two pennies. Anyways, national grid was there and they talk about being in communication with the towns. The fire chief last October said that he told Nat Grid “we have a problem” and they got the crews there as quick as they could. I don’t know how the communication goes with various companies, but it sounded like Nat Grid works with the towns on a regular basis.

[Ginx snewx]

2 hours ago, Sn0waddict said:

Lamont calling on PURA to investigate the response by the states utilities already. Seems incredibly premature to call out the utilities one day in when we were just hit by the largest storm since Irene. This should end well..

Lol dude they estimated 15 to 20 % outage and got 75%. Epic fail

[Ginx snewx]

2 hours ago, Sn0waddict said:

ES reporting system going down again is a big issue which needs to be addressed. Besides that power is just getting restored now because cleanups took a day to complete. Significant progress can and hopefully will be made the next few days, but anyone expecting a one to two days turnaround on a storm that knocks power out to half a million people is out of there mind. 
 

People want better infrastructure and utilities are incentivized to do so, but that comes at a cost to ratepayers which no one wants to pay. So therefore the utilities are limited with what they can do, and this is what you get.  You then hear “bury the lines!” But no one understands how ridiculously expensive and time consuming that would be .

pay them Ceos and stockholders millions breh

[weatherwiz]

11 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I mean to be fair, the whole state of CT is impacted so it plays a role. I just wonder if they were prepared. I was at a town EMA meeting for Norwell. I know the fire chief who is a huge weenie, and he invited me to this meeting as an expert in the weather. It was more for climate change, but whatever. I gave my two pennies. Anyways, national grid was there and they talk about being in communication with the towns. The fire chief last October said that he told Nat Grid “we have a problem” and they got the crews there as quick as they could. I don’t know how the communication goes with various companies, but it sounded like Nat Grid works with the towns on a regular basis.

That is an extremely fair and valid point. I have to be inclined to think that they were just not prepared. Whether that was from just lack of proper guidance, disregarding forecasts, maybe they just aren't equip to handle such a situation...who knows. Also...don't completely quote me on this but I don't believe they actually have their own in-house meteorologist (though that may  be UI). But I do know that many utility companies actually employ their own meteorologists. 

[STILL N OF PIKE]

8 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Lol dude they estimated 15 to 20 % outage and got 75%. Epic fail

They need to Invite Ryan’ H to The table for preparations. I mean ..why not . 

[Ginx snewx]

Towns don't touch trees on power lines without Eversource.  Preposition means embedded a crew with each town so they can deenergize so trees can be removed. Believe me, this is an epic fail on Eversource. They actually told me this year when they were trimming trees when I asked about the south side trees that it was the towns problem.  I pointed out that most trees fail in southeast winds because trees grow stronger in the prevailing wind direction.  They looked at me with cross eyes. As someone who dealt with EM for years it was always a challenge getting CLP to storm prep meetings,  usually no shows

[Ginx snewx]

10 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

That is an extremely fair and valid point. I have to be inclined to think that they were just not prepared. Whether that was from just lack of proper guidance, disregarding forecasts, maybe they just aren't equip to handle such a situation...who knows. Also...don't completely quote me on this but I don't believe they actually have their own in-house meteorologist (though that may  be UI). But I do know that many utility companies actually employ their own meteorologists. 

no its not Wiz. They failed

[OceanStWx]

38 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Sounds like they did not preposition which is what I mentioned earlier. These guys will prep and usually call other utilities to help. Maybe that didn’t happen. Either they did not believe the forecasts, or they did not get a good forecast from their provider.

I did some disaster training with CMP a while back and they talked about the process. They get to call on favors and grab crews outside the "danger zone" and some of those are better than others. Sometimes they just opt to not have outside crews come in. Or grab them from Quebec (of course that's a COVID complication now).

33 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I honestly don't know if I've ever had a Miller Lite.  Our college beer was Molson... we wished we were Canadian, ha watching "Hockey Night in Canada" on channel 11 out of Montreal while at UVM.  Coors was another popular one... but never Miller.

Lotta Molsons in college. The old 55 pack "keg" was always welcomed in my dorm room.

[Ginx snewx]

28 minutes ago, STILL N OF PIKE said:

They need to Invite Ryan’ H to The table for preparations. I mean ..why not . 

 

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

Steve is right.

[Ginx snewx]

8 hours ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

Steve is right.

All they had to do initially is put one crew in each town to respond to hot spots. I saw pics of melted Asphalt from down wires, fires burning up to hours. That stuff is easily fixed. Utility Emergency preparations should expect the worst and scale back, not scale up. EM 101. We know power goes out,, it happens.  But at least give it your best. The tree trimming which we are charged for is an absolute joke and that includes towns. Tree huggers need to step to the back row. The forests are extremely healthy as shown in the recent released CT forestry report even with gypsies and borders, the biomass has grown. They don't trim opposite sides of streets despite the fact south side trees fall more readily.  I really hope they step it up. 

[ineedsnow]

POWER IS ON WOO HOOO

[Modfan2]

26 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

All they had to do initially is put one crew in each town to respond to hot spots. I saw pics of melted Asphalt from down wires, fires burning up to hours. That stuff is easily fixed. Utility Emergency preparations should expect the worst and scale back, not scale up. EM 101. We know power goes out,, it happens.  But at least give it your best. The tree trimming which we are charged for is an absolute joke and that includes towns. Tree huggers need to step to the back row. The forests are extremely healthy as shown in the recent released CT forestry report even with gypsies and borders, the biomass has grown. They don't trim opposite sides of streets despite the fact south side trees fall more readily.  I really hope they step it up. 

Here is were I will disagree a little; first New England and the Northeast are extremely susceptible to extensive tree damage from events like this and will be going forward. You can trim around power lines all you will always of trees further away that can hit the lines. The storm winds ended at dark and the surveying of the damage really only took place in Yesterday. Today out of state crews will start to come in today (Florida Power & Light sending crews to Jersey yesterday) and set up staging and work. With the amount of damage a downtime of 3-4 days is not unreasonable. 
 

I believe pre staging crews in this situation would be difficult due to damage up the NE Coast. What Eversource should be doing and FP& L has been doing for the past five years is swapping out a lot of the wooden poles for Cement poles, including high tension.

I have been involved in many restorations from IRene, Sandy, Matthew,Irma, and Michael and they all present different challenges.

[Hoth]

4 minutes ago, Modfan2 said:

Here is were I will disagree a little; first New England and the Northeast are extremely susceptible to extensive tree damage from events like this and will be going forward. You can trim around power lines all you will always of trees further away that can hit the lines. The storm winds ended at dark and the surveying of the damage really only took place in Yesterday. Today out of state crews will start to come in today (Florida Power & Light sending crews to Jersey yesterday) and set up staging and work. With the amount of damage a downtime of 3-4 days is not unreasonable. 
 

I believe pre staging crews in this situation would be difficult due to damage up the NE Coast. What Eversource should be doing and FP& L has been doing for the past five years is swapping out a lot of the wooden poles for Cement poles, including high tension.

I have been involved in many restorations from IRene, Sandy, Matthew,Irma, and Michael and they all present different challenges.

Utility company has been on an extensive campaign of cutting down trees near lines in my town over the last few years. Some neighborhoods look shockingly barren after years of having mature trees shading them. Didn't seem to make that much difference on Tuesday. Plenty of trees fell from well within the property lines and took out the wires.

[weatherwiz]

9 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

no its not Wiz. They failed

oh I know they failed. I just thought Scott's point was valid that the entire (well like 95%) of the state was impacted and when that happens it makes efforts much more difficult...BUT they should have been prepared for this and planned. They failed 

[weatherwiz]

10 minutes ago, Modfan2 said:

Here is were I will disagree a little; first New England and the Northeast are extremely susceptible to extensive tree damage from events like this and will be going forward. You can trim around power lines all you will always of trees further away that can hit the lines. The storm winds ended at dark and the surveying of the damage really only took place in Yesterday. Today out of state crews will start to come in today (Florida Power & Light sending crews to Jersey yesterday) and set up staging and work. With the amount of damage a downtime of 3-4 days is not unreasonable. 
 

I believe pre staging crews in this situation would be difficult due to damage up the NE Coast. What Eversource should be doing and FP& L has been doing for the past five years is swapping out a lot of the wooden poles for Cement poles, including high tension.

I have been involved in many restorations from IRene, Sandy, Matthew,Irma, and Michael and they all present different challenges.

But how do surrounding states...including states like MA seem to restore power so much more quickly. Ryan posted a tweet yesterday...I forget which storm it was...maybe the Oct snowstorm but looking at towns along the MA/CT border...towns on the CT side were dealing with significant outages days and days after the storm...meanwhile just over the border many towns had significant progress.

I'm not downplaying the fact that we are susceptible to wind events and the fact we have tons of trees near power lines...but they should know this, understand this, and that should be all the more reason to be better prepared. They have never, ever been over-prepared for an event...it's always under-prepared and significantly. They just can't keeping putting blame on weather forecasts for their inability to do their jobs.  

[Ginx snewx]

37 minutes ago, Modfan2 said:

Here is were I will disagree a little; first New England and the Northeast are extremely susceptible to extensive tree damage from events like this and will be going forward. You can trim around power lines all you will always of trees further away that can hit the lines. The storm winds ended at dark and the surveying of the damage really only took place in Yesterday. Today out of state crews will start to come in today (Florida Power & Light sending crews to Jersey yesterday) and set up staging and work. With the amount of damage a downtime of 3-4 days is not unreasonable. 
 

I believe pre staging crews in this situation would be difficult due to damage up the NE Coast. What Eversource should be doing and FP& L has been doing for the past five years is swapping out a lot of the wooden poles for Cement poles, including high tension.

I have been involved in many restorations from IRene, Sandy, Matthew,Irma, and Michael and they all present different challenges.

Not one town had a crew staged with DPW. Think about that. Understaffed, totally dependant on outside contractors and sending millions to CeOs and stockholders. Maybe it's time to break up the monopoly and make it privatized

[Ginx snewx]

29 minutes ago, Hoth said:

Utility company has been on an extensive campaign of cutting down trees near lines in my town over the last few years. Some neighborhoods look shockingly barren after years of having mature trees shading them. Didn't seem to make that much difference on Tuesday. Plenty of trees fell from well within the property lines and took out the wires.

obviously you can not stop it all but if you seriously think they are doing enough take a ride up here and look at the rural areas. They half assed it. After all the lessons from previous storms they failed to prep, especially in towns.  We all know power loss happens and we prepare but to see the same mistakes happen over and over again is cringe worthy. When you anticipate 10 to 15 % loss and you get 75% you better do a couple of things.  Get better forecasters and reevaluate your infrastructure 

[Hoth]

Looks like we'll likely have a confirmed tornado from that warned cell in Westport. Impressive video of it coming ashore. Roof ripped off at least one house.

[Ginx snewx]

6 minutes ago, Hoth said:

Looks like we'll likely have a confirmed tornado from that warned cell in Westport. Impressive video of it coming ashore. Roof ripped off at least one house.

link? Edit

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

How much rainfall generally across the area?

Seemed as though selling on excessive rains for the majority of the area was justified.

[Great Snow 1717]

2 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

How much rainfall generally across the area?

Seemed as though selling on excessive rains for the majority of the area was justified.

LWM had .28

[RUNNAWAYICEBERG]

Still haven’t seen any ES trucks around and the tree in the middle of the road that took down our power hasn’t been touched.