Seriously, J.Kb.’s article is spot on regarding storm prep. It is entirely different in New Hampshire. My article Gas it up! was actually written before he posted and I read his article.
Different locations have to prepare differently. One of my clients is based out of Florida, they prepare for very differently than we do. Electricity is what provides them with survival in that horrible heat.
Up in the New Hampshire we did have a poor attitude towards state wide storm prep. That is to say that it use to be “if the power goes out, we’ll fix it”. The ice storm changed that policy. From spring until late fall we’ll see road crews out there trimming back trees.
I don’t know how tall the trees of Florida grow, but I’ve got some trees in my yard that are over 50 feet tall. That means that to clear the powerlines any tree that is taller than the distance to the powerline would have to be topped or felled.
Around here, most of the power outages were caused by idiots that forgot that snow is slippery and took out poles or knocked things into power lines.
When we lived in Maryland we didn’t have huge storms but we still prepared. It was just different. In Maryland the prep work was food. As soon as they heard a storm was coming the population would buy out all the stores of every last bit of food.
If we lost power during a winter storm that meant we were going to be moving to a shelter because almost nobody had real heating backup.
I’ve had power outages in most places where I’ve lived. Massive outages are few and places like New Hampshire and Florida actually do prepare for them and both do a good job.
J.Kb. If you are ever in the situation where you need a place to stay, come visit. We’ll feed you well and we can enjoy wood heat.
Well….I’ve lived in both states. Comparing these two states is like comparing a Wilson Combat pistol to a flintlock pistol. Both propel a projectile downrange when they’re fired and both can kill but other than those to similarities, they are worlds apart. If Florida is going to be compared to New Hampshire, the inland areas of the state would be a more accurate comparison. And personally, I’ll take the extreme heat over the extreme cold any day. Extreme cold makes me relive every injury I’ve ever had, whereas the heat just feels…. like I never had those injuries to begin with. I do miss white-water canoeing on a class four to six though.
USA TODAY, I know, a communist rag, but they’re quoting somebody else.
The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.
I like to visit cold, or used to, but I think I’ll stay in Texas, due to Globull Warming, it is plenty cold enough my old ass.
I do feel for J.Kb. It is hard moving from a warm state to the cold of New Hampshire. I happen to love the winter.
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This particular storm was worse than many we’ve had in the last 15. It wasn’t particularly deep, it was just very wet and heavy. Our snowblower was working hard to throw snow. We sheared a shear pin in the second stage because the snow was so heavy and it packed.
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When we moved up here, we were lucky, we had a small tractor with a plow on it for clearing and later we had a backhoe.
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We had a genset for the house because one of the people needed to use a CPAP and also had a heart condition. We had many hands to make light work of it. I don’t remember losing power the first year we were there. After that I think we had two or three outages that lasted less than 2 hours.
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In our current home the longest power has been out is 4 hours or so. So again not bad.
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This posting is mostly just poking the bear. I hope J.Kb. and all of you took it as the jest it was intended.
The snow itself I don’t mind. I did three years in Chicago, six in South Dakota, and a winter in Nebraska. I’ve been in snow upto my waist overnight. It’s the way infrastructure is done. I’m gathering that it’s piecemeal. Some towns do maintenance of the trees, some don’t. It shocks me there is no standard. Forget Florida for a moment. In South Dakota every may, once the snow melts, the Black Hats (an elite forest firefighter group) clears out the sick and dead trees. Then by August when everything is dry and the lighting comes, South Dakota doesn’t have big forest fires. For 24 years of my life I lived in states where we just chainsaw the shit out of the trees to protect the infrastructure. That’s normal for me.
Thank you for explaining. That makes more sense.
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When I was in Maryland, there were town limits. Outside of town limits everything became county responsibility. It wasn’t uncommon to hear about people living just outside of town limits having to wait an hour for the sheriff to arrive from the otherside of the county while the town cops had shown up 5 minutes after called at the neighbors home.
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In New Hampshire, every acre of land is inside town limits. All for tax purposes. So you do find differences in how road work is handled and how other infrastructure is taken care of. It is all mostly taken care of at a very local level. You might try showing up at local government meetings, depending on where you are actually located you might find that you are one of only a few that do show up. Be careful, if you show up more than a few times you are likely to be asked to run.