Gypsy’s wondering who turned out the lights.
For Picture Day this week, I decided to dig up a few neat looking pictures I took shortly after I started the photo countdown that put this feature on its long hiatus.
On the last week of June, we had a pretty nasty thunderstorm roll through that brought 
with it a lot of wind. The tree trimming efforts of our local power company that I’ve documented at The Nest before have done a pretty good job at preventing a lot of the power outages that were extremely common due to falling limbs from storms during the past decade. But even that was no match for this the ferocity of this summer thunderbumper. I lost power for over six hours that evening… and I was lucky. A lot of people in my town wouldn’t get reconnected for another couple days.
Out of the sheer boredom of having nothing better to do without electricity, I got out my camera a took a few snaps of the really weird looking twilight sky that often happens in the aftermath of storms that hit within an hour or two of sunset. They were made even more eerie looking by the fact that every house and streetlight in the area was dark…
Why am I suddenly thinking of the opening to Tales From The Darkside?
The pinkish-orange glow from the twilight casts a strange reflection off my street without a single artificial light source to be found. I like this photo from my backyard even better with that glow shimmering off the post-storm floodwater in my ditch…
Waterfront property, ghetto style.
How did people ever survive without electricity?
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
We hide our power lines underground in cities and only the connections between cities or the power lines that feed our trains are endangered. Yes, it is more costly to start with, but it really helps to keep outages rare enough that they are reported in the radio news. They usually do not last longer than 3 or 4 hours here. For a nation that loves their freezers filled to the brim that’s important.
I’m not sure why that hasn’t been done in a widespread fashion here, other than good old American stubbornness. It would also be a massive undertaking given how many places still have the electrical infrastructure above ground. The power lines to my house from the pole are underground, but that does no good when the power lines it comes from are all above ground (not to mention the transformer on the pole that has caused four outages for me due to fried squirrels)…
Teacher, Teacher! I KNOW THE ANSWER!
It is not stubbornness – it is money. The investment for putting all those cables underground (and in a way that they are still accessable when needed!) just was cutting the profit margin. Hence – overground cables with frequent outages.
that’s what I ask me too… and I’m the king of idiots… the TV was off and I thought well then I watch a DVD …aaaaaah
CRACKIN UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ☺☺☺☺☺☺☺
When my internet went out a few weeks ago, my first instinct was to go for the laptop. Uhhhhh, no, that needs the wifi connection too…
we are the victims of our time… the batteries of my remote died and I couldn’t open the car… instead to put the key in the lock I walked 87 miles to the next store to buy new batteries… oh man!!!!
these are some pretty cool after storm photos !!
Thanks! I’m glad the camera didn’t need plugged in…
Cool photos. There’s something special about the atmosphere just after a storm. You guys need to put your power lines under the ground…
I’m sure The Big Guy will get right on that after he builds his wall…
Sometimes darkness is your friend.
Only when I’m sleeping… and even that’s usually in the middle of the daylight.
The storm photos have that “ominous” feel to them……!! Eerie even. Makes for interesting photos though. We have underground utility cables here too but that doesn’t keep the electric from going out in a storm at the transformer or when some idiot hits a utility pole and causes an outage…….we NEED our electricity don’t we!!
Pam
If I had a few hamster wheels, I could probably get my squirrels to chip in and act as an all natural generator. That would actually make for a pretty green energy alternative… though the cost of feeding the workers might counterbalance the lack of a power bill…
Yes….there’s that to consider…..! Unless you started a sunflower garden too……