Wow, what a week and I missed almost all of it. East Central West Virginia was hit by a surprise snowstorm Monday evening and throughout Tuesday. Locally in the Morgantown, WV area we had about 8 inches in the higher elevations. In the mountains East of hear they have close to two feet. Now 8in of snow is now big deal; however, the snow was very heavy and wet, and when you take into consideration that most of the trees STILL have their leaves, the two do not mix well. The snow waited down the trees because it laid on the leaves breaking branches all over the place. This brought down power lines and caused massive power outages and over half of this county alone did not have power. My power was restored today about 3:30PM. So a couple of cold nights with no heat (our apartment is electric) and nothing much to do but we made it though.
If anything, this would be a real excuse to burn some couches in the streets.
A number of people throughout western Pennsylvania and West Virginia are still waiting for their lights to come back on.
The Morgantown area was one of the hardest hit locations.
Traffic lights are off in some locations and 20,000 people are still without power. There’s a chance that some people will be without power until Friday.
“The thing that’s complicated things is that the leaves are still on the trees,” said Allen Staggers, of Allegheny Power. “It’s that much more surface area for the snow to accumulate. It’s bending those trees down, breaking limbs, breaking branches.”
“We expect it may be until Friday before everyone is back in service.”
West Virginia University has set up a temporary shelter with cots for students without power.
Students are yet to take advantage of the warmth. Instead, they are staying busy playing cards by candlelight and keeping warm around fires.
“It was all lit up about 12 hours ago,” said Johnny Sciarappa, a West Virginia student. “The darker it gets … we had to scratch up these candles.”
While less than two inches remain, Morgantown initially got five inches of the heavy snow. Monongalia Residents Still In The Dark Most of the snow in Monongalia County is melted, but it hasn’t restored power to residents.
There are still 16,000 people in Monongalia County without power, with 5,000 customers that had power restored today.
“It was freezing cold in there,” said a WVU employee. “I was thinking hypothermia or something.”
He wasn’t alone.
West Virginia students handled the outage in different ways. It will take some creativity to stay warm until Friday – which is when Allegheny Power said power should be restored.
“I took a bunch of my friends, we drove an hour back to my house in Pittsburgh,” a WVU student said. “We all stayed over there and came back this morning.”
While most people tried to remain upbeat during the power outage, it was easier said than done for some.
“It’s one of the worst experiences I’ve had since I’ve been at college,” said another WVU student.
Yes it did suck, there was nothing to do but lay around under covers. I stayed at a friends the other night because it was a little too cold. You really take electricity for granted.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
2 Comments:
Nice new picture too! I really missed a lot :D