melev

It's been a busy week for me as I prepare for my upcoming trips, care for customer orders, club business, and more. Yesterday afternoon, my area was hit with a 'microburst' storm. I saw a few raindrops on my windshield as I was heading home, and maybe 30 minutes later it was crazy outside. The wind was huge, the trees' branches were swaying hard, there was white mist going every direction, then pea-sized hail came down for a few minutes. It rained really hard and fast, and the storm then passed, but not without knocking out the power to the area.

Expecting it to resume soon, I waited a while. Then I ran another quick errand that turned out to be a logistical nightmare because cars were brought to a standstill with traffic lights out and railroad crossing bars blocking the way with no train in sight. A five minute trip took me 20 minutes one way, and it was nearly an hour coming back. I called 911 to request that a traffic officer be posted at the major intersections to wave groups of cars on their way in an orderly fashion since people obviously couldn't figure out how to take turns and keep the long lines moving. It was so bad that I reversed my course and found a back way into my neighborhood.

Always lock your generator to something big and stationary to avoid theft. It puts a target on your back since you have resources they don't.


I turned on the generator and ran power cords to the essentials like the aquarium, and called the power company to report my outage around 6:30pm. The recording stated power would be back at 9:30pm; not too bad I thought. At 8:20, my ceiling fan came back to life but I waited 15 minutes to make sure it was going to stay on... then I proceeded to switch all the power cords to their normal outlets and rolled up the extension cords until next time. The generator was shut off and put back into storage mode, and I came back inside. Before I could sit down, the entire house went dark again. I couldn't believe it, and I was really angry since it takes time to get all that stuff wired up again temporarily. I waited for another 15 minutes, and then resigned myself to the fact I'd need to pull it all out again and resume emergency power mode. I ran cords to the fishroom, to the TV, my computer and the router, and plugged in a portable A/C unit to provide some cool air in the livingroom for the time being. I called the power company to report my outage, and the recording stated power would resume at 5:30 am. I had to ask my neighbor if he would be so kind as to run down to the gas station to fill up my two gas cans so I'd have enough to keep the generator running, which he did. It took 5g to fill up the reservoir, which runs about 12 hours straight.

This A/C unit has an air duct running through the wall into the garage. I still have to run a chimney vent to send that hot exhaust up into the attic space.


I stayed up all night with busy work, and at 6:00am power was restored. It was out for over 13 hours. All the cords were rolled up again, the generator was powered down and stored. Finally, I got to get some well-deserved sleep. My reef survived another crisis. This storm affected many areas locally, but it did the same thing around the same time to someone I know in Louisiana that called me today. Texas Storm Chasers posted a picture of Trinity Park last night, where wind speeds were recorded as much as 60mph, and 50 trees were snapped or blown over during the microburst.

For additional information about using a generator, please read this article:
http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...tect-your-reef