Surviving the Ice Storm

Unless you have been completely buried under ice with no communication with the outside world, you are probably aware that Kentucky got hit with a massive ice storm. Our county was one of the harder hit areas.

We woke up last Tuesday morning to an ice covered world. The university where we work went on a delay schedule and then shortly after decided to close. It would remain closed all week. That never happens so that should tell you something.

Around 9:15 am, we lost power. It would not return until Friday night around 8 pm.

Our town was basically shut down. Very few gas stations had power so it became questionable if we could find more kerosene for our backup heater. Kroger did remain open (I avoid Wal-Mart even during ice storms) so we were able to get a few groceries to keep in our cooler. Basically, for all of Tuesday and Wednesday, we listened to the radio and I worked on a jigsaw puzzle during the daylight. And that was it. What else can you do?

On Wednesday night, the temperatures dipped down to the low teens. It was below 50 in the house when we woke up Thursday morning. We couldn't take it anymore. We came to the office for a while. There was no internet or email so it was useless since our software is web based. We decided to load up the cat and go to my parents who live about an hour away. We stayed there Thursday and Friday night. Our neighbor called around 9pm on Friday to tell us the power was back. They waited an hour to call to make sure it wasn't a false alarm.

Over a week later, there are still people in our county who are in the dark and thousands across the state. I haven't felt much like blogging and I apologize for being gone. We were certainly luckier than most. We had no structural damage to our house, no frozen pipes, no broken tree limbs on our vehicles. All that we lost was food in our fridge and freezer.

Please remember those still suffering in the aftermath of this storm.