Winter Storm Riley check-in post

March 3, 2018 4:09 PM

I've got three friends who I've been trying to get in touch with to see how they are enduring Winter Storm Riley and haven't heard from them. I thought maybe others might have the same thing going on. So, here's a post! If you're in the path of the current nor'easter, check in here and let us know if you're okay!
posted by hippybear to MetaFilter-Related at 4:09 PM (31 comments total)

We lost power (and heat) for a little over 24 hours. My parents, three miles down the road, did not, so we sent Kid Ruki there for the night. The mister and I spent the afternoon at work. I had actual work to do. He charged stuff in his office and played video games on his laptop. (We work together.)

The basement flooded up past the first stair, but the washer, dryer, and furnace are all on platforms, so they're okay. We're going to have to toss a lot of stored stuff though.

The mister took my CRV and borrowed my parents' generator to run the sump pump (and the coffee pot). I was still at work when this was set up, but apparently it involved something with the circuit breaker to run the generator? Anyway, the generator ran out of gas, and the mister saw lights on his way back. According to a Facebook post from wenestvedt, the power had actually been restored 46 minutes earlier. Oops.

The temperature inside the house has gotten back up to 64 degrees. The furnace has been running for two hours.
posted by Ruki at 5:01 PM on March 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

I was lucky. I happened to be in a house that was built in 1850, which was less than ideal, but I also live in an area that gets 110+ inches of snow per season, so we're hardened to that sort of thing. I'm all good, drove back to my suburban apartment from the country today on dry roads. I did, however, have to eat microwave popcorn for breakfast and dinner on the worst weather day due to poor planning on my part.
posted by xyzzy at 6:20 PM on March 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Stuck for hours on a day-late train behind a broken freight train, but we're all safe, just still stuck far from home. At least the Amtrak employees are being awesome, communicative, and giving out all the café car food for free.

Cinnamon rolls are a salve for the cranky traveler!
posted by introp at 6:21 PM on March 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

Hi, Ruki! I am about a mile south, and we were without power for 23 hours. (Packing the freezer and fridge for transport to a friendly vacant freezer in a town with power was, once again, enough to propitiate the God Of Sparks.)

Never got into the forties indoors, but I was worried about tonight.

Many, many trees down — and a surprising number of these ate tall trees that were simply tipped over by the winds, lifting a rootball into the air.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:33 PM on March 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

I just waded through the basement because I thought the sump pump had tipped over. It hadn’t, but the configuration is making a bubbling sound that is super awesome to sleep directly over, ugh. Anyway. I got to see what we lost in the flooding, and now I’m sad. All the sentimental things from Kid Ruki’s childhood, paintings from my late mother in law, all the clothes that I just lost enough weight to fit into again and was about to switch into my closet, an heirloom blanket that was going to be washed, a bunch of Girl Scout stuff, a brand new tent... From the watermarks on the storage closets down there, which will also need to be junked, there was over a foot of water. It’s still over the first step, and deeper towards the other side. I have a severe mold allergy, so getting this all cleaned up is going to suck.
posted by Ruki at 12:09 AM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

I did pretty well... my bus commutes were unpleasant, but I was developing a cold, so I went home early enough to avoid most of the carnage and worst traffic. My building was without power, but I just wanted to get into bed anyway. The cats were nervous with all the banging from the roof — between the neighbor’s house shedding shingles like a white cat and a dark suit and a couple of metal fixtures tearing partway off my building, it was quite noisy. When I felt well enough to get up and feed the cats, the power was back on (although there were a few short losses later). Weirdly, the roof doesn’t seem to have leaked, which it usually does during heavy rainfall. My coworkers all seem to have gotten home OK, and I only know one person still without power, so that’s good.

I hope everyone in Eastern MA is OK!
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:18 AM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

Towns all around me had power outages and flooding. But where I'm at road through fine. Even the snow that dropped during the storm is already melted away.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 9:10 AM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Just installed a sump pump at my mother-in-law's house. In the sciencegeek apartment, we had power to everything except the wall with the fridge when half the apartment building lost power. I'm left wondering who is paying for our fridge's electricity. Not sure if I really want to know. The power loss included the heat and hot water for the building and I had flashbacks to the building I used to live in in the Bronx where our landlord didn't like fixing things. At all.

I'm totally bummed that I missed the sight of multiple barges that broke free from their moorings near the Tappanzee Bridge and went downstream on the Hudson.

At work there was no electric and no internet. It was restored mid-morning today. We'd been spending a lot of time in the woods cutting down trees next to our deer fence and either we got lucky or our hard work paid off and the fence wasn't harmed by falling trees.
posted by sciencegeek at 2:09 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

The bubbling was actually a split hose, ugh. The mister replaced it this morning, but not before our water heater was damaged. I am going to try my best to not be resentful of the fact that the mister is leaving for his Vegas vacation on Wednesday.
posted by Ruki at 2:52 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

My college had a snow day on Friday--the second time we've closed down for blizzard conditions in two years--thanks to the nearly two feet of snow that magically appeared in and around the nearest city (we had about a foot out here). Incidentally, this was also the second snow day we've had since I arrived nearly twenty years ago. As I was still entirely unable to speak on Friday, thanks to straining my laryngitis-affected vocal cords on Monday, the added day off at least contributed to my rehab. But put me even further behind in my syllabus.
posted by thomas j wise at 3:36 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh man I was waiting for this post but had NO INTERNET to post it. Our power (In Westport MA, my dad's place where I was taking a "vacation" for the week) was out from 2 pm Friday. The house supposedly has a whole-house generator but it was fiddly. So my sister who was just down for the long weekend went out in that nutso storm and FIXED IT--reset the error codes, restarted it, waited to see if it turned on again--and she is my hero. So we had heat and a working fridge and running water, but not internet, a stove or any lights in any downstairs bathrooms. Dad, what were you thinking you weirdo genius?!

So, it was interesting. We called it glamping. You couldn't run everything at once or the generator would kick out so we were careful with everything. we had planned a big chicken parm dinner which we wound up making only with stovetop (gas) and the toaster oven and microwave, but not at the same time! We stuck close to the MEMA website which had great intel on who did and didn't have power, Maynard MA had one person without power, then two, then four, then back to one! No love for Eversource who were clearly in over their heads and started out on Twitter saying "Hey DM us for updates" and quickly started just posting generalized "Wow things are going to take a long time to assess, we are working as hard as we can" and photos of their friendly social media team who I'm sure were getting harassed. I gave them some suggestions. They just posted an ETR for all their towns a few hours ago.

Storm was crazy sounding, Westport is on the South Coast, but we had very little damage which was a nice miracle. We went out for a walk yesterday and there was a power line down which had somehow burned through a gas line and the whole road was closed and it looked bad. I was going to stick around til the power came back on but said FUCK IT today around 2 because I needed a shower and I missed non-phone internet. As we were leaving we saw all the Eversource trucks clustering around a bunch of downed trees and powerlines and I bet the power came back fifteen minutes after i left (ETA< now I don't, Eversource says Monday). I am glad people are okay.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 4:43 PM on March 4, 2018 [3 favorites]

Jessamyn what color car do you drive these days? I think I saw you on the highway between Fall River and Providence yesterday.
posted by vrakatar at 8:19 AM on March 5, 2018

Black. ASKME plates. Hard to miss :D
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 9:08 AM on March 5, 2018 [6 favorites]

We got lucky and were east of the snow line but west of the really bad storms, so we had wind and some totally reasonable rain. I had a bad moment at the end of my shift where something sounded like a chunk of the roof had ripped free, but the next morning I figured out it was probably the wind picking the aluminum ladder off the hooks where it was hanging under the deck and bouncing it off the house. No harm done, other than a bad half-hour of stalking around trying to hear if rain was coming in where rain shouldn't be.

My #$%ing arthritis does not enjoy this weather at all, though, and it was just as well that the storm came in just as I had two days off in a row.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:27 AM on March 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

We had most of a huge white pine come down in our back yard, cutting down the trunk that remains standing is going to suck. Luckily it didn't hit anything else since it landed on the leach field for the septic tank. On the plus side, crackly softwood for our fire pit this summer!
posted by lydhre at 7:31 AM on March 6, 2018

Annnd waiting to see if we get 2 feet of snow tomorrow.
posted by lydhre at 7:32 AM on March 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

ASKME plates.

NO F'IN WAY.

Really?
posted by wenestvedt at 1:37 PM on March 6, 2018

Yes! And they are green.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 6:29 PM on March 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

So do we roll this thread over into the second wave storm keep keep hoping people will post their status here? Or is a second thread required?
posted by hippybear at 9:25 PM on March 6, 2018

Eh, it's just a bunch of Massholes complaining about their power (plus me & Ruki), so maybe let this one ride.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:24 AM on March 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

You and Ruki can be honorary Massholes. :)

Maybe just add to the title of the post so it covers both storms?
posted by lydhre at 11:38 AM on March 7, 2018 [2 favorites]

We are super close to the Mass border. I do my grocery shopping there, so I'll take it. :)

All day at work, we were trying to figure out how much snow we're going to get, if any. Every place we looked had a different estimate. I enjoyed the Weather Channel's headline of 0 to 12 inches.

Kid Ruki was mad this morning because the school across the street from hers already had early dismissal and hers didn't. She got out early anyway and came home to a gentle rain. We had an afternoon siesta, woke to slightly more intense rain, tried on a new lipstick she got, and then, in an intense moment of THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY, found ourselves looking outside the window at the biggest snowflakes we've ever seen. Rain, lipstick, snowcover. The change was really that fast and the snowflakes really that enormous.

My bedroom is above the sump pump (current time between cycles: 30.8 seconds) and next to the woods, and I can't tell if the thumping sounds above me are snow falling from the trees or a raccoon in the attic. There was an alarming crashing noise earlier before the persistent thumping noises began, and I don't think the overhang is that big, so I'm thinking raccoon, but my parents lean toward snow falling. I'll find out in the morning. Either way, the dog is very angry about it, so I'm in for a long night.
posted by Ruki at 6:53 PM on March 7, 2018 [2 favorites]

About 12” here in Concord MA but sopping wet snow. We lost about three more trees in the back last night, one came close to hitting our fence. Can’t quite assess the damage yet but it’s going to to be a lot of clean-up/firewood. Husband is plowing, daycare is closed, it’s going to be a long long day.
posted by lydhre at 4:04 AM on March 8, 2018

I woke up to no power, no heat, and more damn flooding in the basement. Kid Ruki had no school, of course. I texted my boss to say I wouldn't be in, put an extra blanket over the kid, and went back to sleep. When I woke up again, the power was back, the basement was mostly dry, and one of my neighbors had plowed my driveway. I have a meeting with my lawyer in an hour and a half that I'm still mentally preparing myself for, so the raccoon check and wet vac of the basement will have to wait.
posted by Ruki at 10:22 AM on March 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

While I slept in, my teenage boys spontaneously shoveled the driveway. *insert sound of angelic chorus*
posted by wenestvedt at 8:06 AM on March 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

So, are we all braced for tomorrow’s installment?
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:55 AM on March 12, 2018

I have to admit that it gave me a certain of sense of satisfaction to inform the mister on his last day of Vegas vacation yesterday what he had to look forward to on his return.

It takes 46 seconds for the sump well to fill back up, so I still haven't wet vacced the basement from the last one because there's no place to dump the water yet. This has made laundry super fun, especially as Kid Ruki and I spent the weekend cleaning her room and I learned that she has enough clothes for a horrifying six full loads of laundry.

In better news, my site closed tomorrow for the second time in the seven years I've been working there. The first time was in January. The mister has to work from home while I get to blissfully sleep in, but, you know, Vegas, so I feel zero sympathy. Stay safe, MeFriends!
posted by Ruki at 4:17 PM on March 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

It’s coming down heavily in PVD, but not too windy. The Governor help the good sense to declare the state closed yesterday fairly early, so not too many people are struggling around in it. We got a lot less snow overnight, but it seems to be trying to catch up.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:31 AM on March 13, 2018

Man, I have such sympathy and empathy for all of you affected by this. It's seriously not fair what is happening to you right now.

It seems like Mother Nature has been especially brutal in so many ways in the past while. Fires, hurricanes, landslides, nor'easters... all of them coming in multiples.

And the earthquakes all around the world, happening what feels like a lot more frequently.

Earth, air, fire, and water. We're living in an interesting time.
posted by hippybear at 6:24 PM on March 13, 2018

So I think we're at 20 inches? Kid Ruki doesn't have school tomorrow, either, but the town schools have a two hour delay. My site closure turned out to be a corporate decision, because all the admin buildings in MA, RI, and NH were closed. That was a weird phone call.

On the mister's second go round with the snowblower, the neighbor with the tricked out tractor came round and just wordlessly blasted through our driveway. Blessings upon him.

I have some crazy sinus pressure thing going on though, and my dog has surgery on Thursday, so I might call out tomorrow and spend some extra time with her.
posted by Ruki at 8:25 PM on March 13, 2018

Harsh winter weather in eastern US could be due to warmer Arctic
No firm conclusions here, but the two seem connected
posted by XMLicious at 11:02 AM on March 16, 2018