F is for Fallout

Yeah, so, that storm, that Monster storm.

I’ve lived in New England all my life, and I love it. Winter is mostly a rite of passage we have to endure to appreciate our beautiful summers.

I was a kid in Massachusetts during the Blizzard 1978, and I have no recollection of the storm itself. What I remember is school closing for two weeks in January and a lot of snow—27 inches of snow fell in roughly 33 hours, according to Wiki. This translated into our ability to jump off the carport roof into the snow piled up around it. My mother shed a lot of tears having us home, too. My brothers were what we call now EXTRA. Extra trouble, extra noise, extra fighting.

I lived in the White Mountains during the Ice Storm of 1998, in a valley protected by mountain ranges on all sides. The Ice Storm raged everywhere around us, but didn’t hit the valley. We might have lost power for a day, I think? Every time I see a bent over birch, I remember driving around to see the devastation for ourselves.

In the Ice Storm of 2008, my beloved had experienced the 1998 storm far worse than I had and was a nervous wreck. That’s all I remember about this. We lost power, we did our thing. This house is heated with a wood stove, and we cook with gas. Hell, if we had to, we could cook on the wood stove—I’d done this in the White Mountains. So we are very lucky that way. But the well runs on electricity, and though we have milk jugs filled with water, we go through them pretty quick. We then run them down to the fire barn and fill them there. They always open as a warming and charging station, thank goodness. Our neighbors let us shower at their place. Back then I was working from home, when it was uncool, but I had to drive in after a day or two of not working.

Snowmagedden 2010 we had too many heavy snow storms one after the other until all the snow was built up in high canyons in our driveway and the side of the road. The only one who liked it was my dog who had a little husky and wolf in her. She loved winter. She smiled standing up above us while we shoveled and pushed the snowblower around. The snow was high enough she could stand outside the porch windows, too. For some reason, she got a kick out of the new landscape.

I know over time my memories about last week’s storm will be as vague as the past storms. Maybe. After two days in the dark, two trips to the fire barn, going out three times with the snow blower, we were done playing pioneer days. I was on-call for my job this weekend, where I’m working from home, but no electricity means no internet. So no overtime and no on-call pay.

I couldn’t go into the office to work, as they lost power, too.

I knitted, worked on a short story, did a lot of reading. I missed the internet, not only for work, but for those sudden story questions and the ability to do some quick research to see if a thing is feasible or not.

I mean, really it sounds like I’m complaining so I guess I am. I’m also recording this storm as a record breaker, a game changer. We’re aging, and winter gets just a little harder every year. Next winter we’ll have a generator. We’ve resisted because neither of us has a medical need for one, and they’re super noisy. In our little corner of the world, there is a symphony of generators grinding away as soon as the power goes out.

Once the power came back on, we still had to wait for the internet to be assessed and repaired. Trees went down all over the place, closing the roads or making them impassable.

With my phone on roaming, I followed our community’s facebook pages to find out who was open, etc… most of the businesses were running on their generators but it’s physically and emotionally wearying for everyone.

People asked for help and the community stepped up. My heart goes out to folks with disabilities and medical needs that become critical without the infrastructure. We had to throw out a lot of food but many people can’t replace their groceries easily, and it gets worse if you’ve lost work time. There are still homes without heat and electricity. I think the last time I looked it was 42,000. We’re very lucky, that’s our takeaway. We’ll contact our local food pantry and see what we can do, too, to help with the fallout from this Monster Storm.