This video was posted by my friend Jeff, who was hit hard by the storm. After a gang of friends with chain saws had cleared his driveway, he made the video driving along the road he lives on.
We are all lucky that the weather is cooperating — sunny, temps around 80˚, low humidity, light breezes. This would all be much less bearable in 90˚ heat and 90% humidity — or 20˚ below zero with three feet of snow.
Today the Red Cross set up at a local school to provide drinking water and showers (“bring your own towel”). We stopped there after going out for a burger and filling up the gas can for the generator. We filled four gallon jugs with water and also were strongly encouraged to take a case of bottled water. I will go back tomorrow for a shower.
The power company said this morning, “We still have 4,000 members without power. Prepare for a prolonged outage.”
Here is their outage map as of 8:00 p.m. on Monday. There are considerably fewer dots than on Sunday. You may not be able to read the legend, but the red dots represent 200-499 members, the yellow 50-99, the light blue 10-49, and the purple ones 1-9. The utility’s priority is, understandably, connecting as many people in as short a time as possible, which means we, one of the light blue dots, are low on the list.
This was the scene in our kitchen this morning. Espresso and milk heating on the Coleman stove, leftovers warming in the tiny microwave from the mini-mini-motorhome. The latte was very satisfying, but it turns out the microwave requires 1000 watts and the generator puts out 800. The leftovers warmed to room temperature, which was good enough. Fine dining!
I forgot to show you this one yesterday. We are becoming quite fond of this arch over the driveway, long may it reign.
A couple photos from others’ feeds.
Tonight during dinner I asked Smokey what he planned to do next at home. The only thing having to do with the storm that he mentioned was getting the chipper-shredder up and running; the other things were items that were on his to-do list before the storm. That means we are as comfortable as humanly possible, and I will be eternally grateful (once again!) for my talented and resourceful sweetie.
kmkat & her kneedles 
Glad you and Smokey have adjusted so well. I have to say I’m not surprised – you two are practical and resourceful, excellent qualities to get you through a prolonged power outage. That said, I hope you get juice again really soon!
I am quite happy to see our Bialetti in active duty! A true god-send: coleman stoves and bialetti pots!
I hope your power is back soon!
Yeah, that Smokey might be a keeper! 😉
Good to see you purring along in your home-camping adventure! Do you have a gas or charcoal grill to put into service? (You know – for s’mores)
You guys are so resourceful! It is so challenging to “weather” a long-term power outage, but y’all are doing it in style and with good humor. Apparently, our place up north suffered a similar fate over the weekend (glad we’re not up there). They even had to “close” the river because of flooding and downed trees!
Sounds like things are workable even if they’re not ideal. But this makes me miss the camping stove my parents had when I was younger! (They may still have it, but I don’t live there now.) I don’t go camping these days, but buying a small stove for emergencies wouldn’t be a bad idea.
I’m impressed by your preparedness, and very thankful that at least so far I have not had such windstorms to deal with. The last time big trees fell here, they fell silently in the night, from officially unspecified causes associated with heavy rain but not wind.
I saw a lot of video and photos of your storm damage. It was all over the Twin Cities news. Glad you came through safely, but it looks like you have a lot of damage to clean up. Here’s hoping you get your power back up soon.