S/O weather-Memphis yesterday

[Dmmetler]

Yesterday we had a heat index of 110, followed by a major straight line winds thunderstorm.  My neighborhood is all old growth trees, and we got hit by the core of the storm.

Our house is OK. We lost several big branches of our poplar and oak trees  and one dogwood tree. Amazingly, the library not only stayed intact, but stayed dry. A lot of our neighbors have trees through their roof, on their cars, trampolines and above ground pools that got destroyed,but as far as I know,all the neighbors are OK. 

Power is out over a big part of Memphis, and I'm not expecting it back in my neighborhood anytime soon bexause so many lines are down, poles are visibly broken, and many of the roads are blocked. My center has a lot of trees down and no power, but seems to be intact except for the playground. 

We're in a hotel a couple of hours away. The three cats who treat being in a car like it's a torture chamber (and get along) are in a friend's spare room. Neo is with us. The snake is quite happy since high heat and humidity is perfect for pythons,so he's staying home. 

 

 

Here's the photos L took. L's storm photos

 

 

[TexasProud]

20 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

Yesterday we had a heat index of 110, followed by a major straight line winds thunderstorm.  My neighborhood is all old growth trees, and we got hit by the core of the storm.

Our house is OK. We lost several big branches of our poplar and oak trees  and one dogwood tree. Amazingly, the library not only stayed intact, but stayed dry. A lot of our neighbors have trees through their roof, on their cars, trampolines and above ground pools that got destroyed,but as far as I know,all the neighbors are OK. 

Power is out over a big part of Memphis, and I'm not expecting it back in my neighborhood anytime soon bexause so many lines are down, poles are visibly broken, and many of the roads are blocked. My center has a lot of trees down and no power, but seems to be intact except for the playground. 

We're in a hotel a couple of hours away. The three cats who treat being in a car like it's a torture chamber (and get along) are in a friend's spare room. Neo is with us. The snake is quite happy since high heat and humidity is perfect for pythons,so he's staying home. 

 

 

Here's the photos L took. L's storm photos

 

 

Yes, that was us a couple of weeks ago.  A few people in my town are still without power.  Then last weekend we got another one and again, so many trees and/or power lines down.  So the town next to us has been out this week.  

[Terabith]

Oh, that looks horrific.  I am so sorry!  

[mommyoffive]

Oh wow.  I am so glad you are safe.  I hope you can go home soon.

[Dmmetler]

NWS says 80-90 MPH winds where we live. 

[Starr]

So glad to hear folks are safe. That’s an awful hit by the storm. 

[ScoutTN]

Scary! Glad you are ok! Hope they get your power on soon. 

[Grace Hopper]

48 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

NWS says 80-90 MPH winds where we live. 

Yikes! Glad you are safe. Hope your power comes back soon. 

[TexasProud]

Sorry, didn't say glad you are safe!  

[annandatje]

I am in same suburb as original poster, and we are on day three without power.  Utility company has restored little over half of outages.  This morning utility company stated that remaining outages could take days to fix due to severe damage to infrastructure.  Temps climbing daily and will be in 100s Thursday.  We are using generator to power two refrigerators, fan, portable air conditioner and microwave.  Should have invested in whole house generator when we remodeled this house.

[Dmmetler]

Still no power. My center has cancelled for the rest of the week, since they don't have power and some of the roads are still blocked. We were able to move to a nicer hotel, at least (the one we got first was definitely a "well, it has power and A/C", and after two reservations turned out to not work, I was willing to take anythihg with rooms available that allowed a cat. The older cats are at "kitty camp" since our vet has power, Neo is with us, and Pinkie python is...well, not at home and somewhere with power and AC so he can have his heating pad plugged in and thermoregulate, because it was 88 indoors yesterday. Our neighborhood is still red, but numbers are gradually going down. 

 

Except for a couple of hours between checkout at crummy hotel and check in at better one, where the only place we could wait with AC was PetSmart (most places don't allow animals...), It wasn't too bad. 

 

We're all OK here through Friday. I'm hoping that after that we'll have power-or at least be able to go back to somewhere nearer to our house so it's easier to get back and forth. I'm also hoping insurance will pay for some of this, but we can afford it. We're better off than many are.

 

Things that we'll be doing after this...

1) getting some sort of generator

2) any future cats will be harness trained and acclimated to travel. 

3)if there is some reason why we need an emergency hotel reservation, I'm calling directly. Not the reservation center, the direct front desk. Because "the right hand doesn't know what the Left hand is doing" definitely applied here. 

 

 

[TexasProud]

Yes, a lot of people here bought generators after our crazy few weeks.  Sorry it is taking so long. 

[Pawz4me]

I hope your power is back on soon.

[Kassia]

44 minutes ago, Pawz4me said:

I hope your power is back on soon.

I do too. 

[Dmmetler]

The good news...there's been a lot of improvement. They're down to three >1000 code blodks in the entire region.

 

The bad...one of those includes our house and my center....

 

 

[heartlikealion]

Ugh I hope things get fixed soon.

We lost power in a storm about a week ago. I left town with the kids and had a neighbor check on the cat. We didn't get it restored for about 5 days and the local Dollar General Market still hasn't restocked most of their cool items. Monday night of this week we lost power for an hour and a half. The power company had two things going on and one of the issues was a limb that fell on the power line (and even started a fire briefly) on our street. They trimmed back the tree and the neighbors might start a petition to have it removed. The homeowner that has the tree on their property seems indifferent/doesn't want to help. Several parts of the tree fell in the initial storm and they didn't help clear them. I was just glad the power was only out briefly as I didn't want to toss food from the fridge/freezer again. And I don't even know if the local gas stations sell ice but the other nearby places that do were closed by then so that was not really an option. 

 

[Dmmetler]

Still no power,and lots of lines down, but they're obviously making progress. We were able to move to a hotel in Memphis and have a room reserved through the weekend, since 4th of July is also leading to more people in hotels (we have a reservation that we can shorten if needed). The big cats are staying with our vet through Monday-they have about 20 of their patients who don't have power at home. Neo seems to be fine with the hotel tour (waiting for check-in this afternoon).
 

I want to go home, but it's reassuring to see that our house is still there and nothing more has gone wrong. 
 

 

[Dmmetler]

A few pics from this evening...the thermostat is our upstairs. 

[Dmmetler]

Neo seems quite content with hotel living...

Edited July 1, 2023 by Dmmetler

[Starr]

Neo!

How unfortunate the power is still off and things are a mess! And the heat . What a combo. 

[heartlikealion]

@Dmmetler I don't know if this is helpful at all, but the Staybridge Suites have a kitchen with full fridge. I stayed at one in Memphis a few weekends ago (using hotel points). It was like a mini apartment with couch, tv, dishes, dishwasher, stovetop. And free breakfast (and I don't mean just a bagel and cereal. Like a waffle maker, eggs, muffins you could grab to go, etc). They also have a fitness room and swimming pool. The one I stayed at is in walking distance to a theater, too, if that helps (discount Tuesdays at Malco). 

[Dmmetler]

We're at the Embassy Suites. Staybridge doesn't allow pets. 

At least one of the outages in our block on the map is estimated tombe fixed July 4 at 8:00 PM...sigh...

 

Over 99% of the city is back up. I don't really like being in the 1%....

[heartlikealion]

2 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

We're at the Embassy Suites. Staybridge doesn't allow pets. 

At least one of the outages in our block on the map is estimated tombe fixed July 4 at 8:00 PM...sigh...

 

Over 99% of the city is back up. I don't really like being in the 1%....

Oh! Sorry didn’t know the pet policy 

we were like that, too. Power was restored nearby first. And my neighbor’s meter box? was knocked off so when the street got power back she had to wait another day for the box to be replaced. Hang in there!

[Faith-manor]

6 minutes ago, Dmmetler said:

We're at the Embassy Suites. Staybridge doesn't allow pets. 

At least one of the outages in our block on the map is estimated tombe fixed July 4 at 8:00 PM...sigh...

 

Over 99% of the city is back up. I don't really like being in the 1%....

Sorry to hear that you are in that very unlucky group!

[annandatje]

You We just lost power again at 8:45pm central during a mild storm.  

Update:  came back on about 10 hours later

Edited July 3, 2023 by annandatje

[Dmmetler]

12 hours ago, annandatje said:

You We just lost power again at 8:45pm central during a mild storm.  

Update:  came back on about 10 hours later

I'm about ready to scream. They were FINALLY working on our neighborhood yesterday. It was scheduled to come back at about 10:00 last night. There actually were no additional "waiting for assessment" or "waiting for a crew" listed. 
 

Then the storm last night came through. We're back to a long list of pending, and the first estimate for restoration is 11:30 tonight.  I suspect that, were I to go up there today, I'd find that we've yet again been pushed down the list because something more important is out and that they're no longer working.  We're back to 94% this morning, after all....
 

 

Edited July 3, 2023 by Dmmetler

[Kassia]

@Dmmetlerhorrible!  I'm so sorry.  

[Dmmetler]

The answering machine just came on! We have power!!! 

 

Since we've got the hotel room for tonight, and a lot of people have had their power up and down as they do repairs, and it's too late to pick up the cats, we're planning to check out here and go home tomorrow morning, but it's amazing how gleeful an answering machine message makes me!!!

[Kassia]

Great news! 

[mommyoffive]

That is great news.  That took forever though. 

[Dmmetler]

It's on, the house has cooled down a lot, and the internet even works. 

 

The power is back at the center but the road is still blocked in one direction, but hopefully we'll be able to be back Weds. 

 

 

[annandatje]

12 hours ago, Dmmetler said:

I'm about ready to scream. They were FINALLY working on our neighborhood yesterday. It was scheduled to come back at about 10:00 last night. There actually were no additional "waiting for assessment" or "waiting for a crew" listed. 
 

Then the storm last night came through. We're back to a long list of pending, and the first estimate for restoration is 11:30 tonight.  I suspect that, were I to go up there today, I'd find that we've yet again been pushed down the list because something more important is out and that they're no longer working.  We're back to 94% this morning, after all....
 

 

To be fair, the utility company should have prioritized  those already without power from earlier storm before working on recent outages.

[Mom_to3]

That was a looong outage!!! I know the feeling of seemingly everybody else getting restored earlier. Storms like that always really scare me because we have several huge trees towering over our house and, at a different house, a strom took down two big trees in our small yard (saw those pics L took!) And power-outages in too hot/humid or too cold conditions are terrible. How difficult was it to find hotel availability?

Also , Neo is a beautiful cat!

[Pawz4me]

7 hours ago, annandatje said:

To be fair, the utility company should have prioritized  those already without power from earlier storm before working on recent outages.

I've heard they always work so that they get the largest number of customers' power restored as quickly as possible. So high density areas will always be prioritized over lower density areas. From a sheer numbers perspective it makes sense, even though it doesn't seem fair at all.

[Kassia]

31 minutes ago, Pawz4me said:

I've heard they always work so that they get the largest number of customers' power restored as quickly as possible. So high density areas will always be prioritized over lower density areas. From a sheer numbers perspective it makes sense, even though it doesn't seem fair at all.

This has been our experience - we live in a semi-rural area and seems like we are always last to get our power back on.  But we also have well water, which means no running water until we have power - including toilets.  

[Pawz4me]

16 minutes ago, Kassia said:

This has been our experience - we live in a semi-rural area and seems like we are always last to get our power back on.  But we also have well water, which means no running water until we have power - including toilets.  

Ours usually gets back on relatively quickly, but I have a very expensive medication that has to be kept cold, and our septic system has a pump. If that pump doesn't come on every so often things start backing up into the main floor bathtub. Not something we want to happen! So those things spurred us to invest in a portable generator and have the house wired with an outside plug for it and so we can flip breakers for whatever circuits we need on. We can't run the big stuff (AC/heat, stove/oven, etc.), but we can keep both fridges and the freezer going, keep the septic pump working, run lights, fans, use and charge electronic stuff, etc. It's a huge peace of mind thing.

[Kassia]

1 hour ago, Pawz4me said:

Ours usually gets back on relatively quickly, but I have a very expensive medication that has to be kept cold, and our septic system has a pump. If that pump doesn't come on every so often things start backing up into the main floor bathtub. Not something we want to happen! So those things spurred us to invest in a portable generator and have the house wired with an outside plug for it and so we can flip breakers for whatever circuits we need on. We can't run the big stuff (AC/heat, stove/oven, etc.), but we can keep both fridges and the freezer going, keep the septic pump working, run lights, fans, use and charge electronic stuff, etc. It's a huge peace of mind thing.

We really need to do that too.  We have a small generator that keeps our refrigerator running but it's not dependable, which is stressful.  

[Dmmetler]

The first night, it was super hard. I had two reservations cancelled out from under me, and we ended up at a pretty crummy hotel that had AC and power, but not much else going for it a couple of hours away at a ridiculously high rate. We were able to move to an extended stay for the rest of the week, but they were booked for the weekend, but by then enough things in Memphis were back up that we were able to get a suite here for the holiday weekend-at a lower cost per night than the first one.

 

In 20/20 hindsight, I should have looked farther away vs closer, booked a whole week, cleaned out the refrigerator/freezer, and taken all of the animals and their shot records  and boarded the older ones where we ended up.  If we'd gone to, say, Nashville, or Branson, or St. Louis we could have done an impromptu vacation vs this constant mess where the entire week was spent worrying about where we were going to sleep that night.

 

I will say that the one smart thing we did was clean out the refrigerator early. 

[Mom_to3]

^Good ideas to keep in mind, thank you! Did you just throw out the food in the fridge expecting the power outage to last?

[Dmmetler]

1 hour ago, Mom_to3 said:

^Good ideas to keep in mind, thank you! Did you just throw out the food in the fridge expecting the power outage to last?

Yes. It had been 12+ hours and most of the city was red-and we'd seen just how bad the neighborhood looked and the number of lines down. The trash pick up in the neighborhood comes on Tuesday, so it makde sense to get it sooner vs later.