5 July 2011

For whom the wind blows ...

Flying Trampolines, Batman!
The morning started with a "lazy" wind - that is, one which goes straight through all your clothes rather than bothering to blow around you.  By 9:00am the wind picked up and blew a gale.
At Midday we had some power flickers, then at 1:45pm the power went out.  (It is still out now (8:00pm) as I write this using laptop power and mobile internet).
Trees have fallen down all over the area.  The main one of concern which knocked out our power was about 5 km along the main road from here.  The huge pine tree fell taking down the high tension power lines all over the road, knocking down about 200 metres of wire.  Luckily the old wooden power poles had recently been replaced with newer concrete ones which held up marvellously.
Current estimates are that power won't be back up until around 6:00am tomorrow.  Power blackouts have affected around 25,000 homes.
This lovely photo is of our trampoline against the side fence.  The trampoline was secured by a number of sandbags but today that wasn't enough.  It travelled over 10 metres (30 feet) before being stopped against the wire fence and small tree.
The temperature today was around 6C (43F) but a windchill of -10C left an effective outside temperature of -4C (25F)!
So here we are enjoying candle light, listening to the howling wind and the gentle rumble of our generator.  The generator is plugged into our refrigerator and freezers.

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