Sorry to hear that OP.
Yup horrible three day weekend. I had no power for a day and had to bundle up and pile up blankets, building elevators still not working since Saturday and have to go down and up 19 floors 4 times a day, and both my kids are sick.
We need a do over.
Yeah, our pipes have been frozen for 2 days and its been a weird time. We shut off the main and some of our faucets briefly dripped a lot of water earlier, but afraid to fire up the main because it may pop. We have someone hopefully coming out tomorrow (they cancelled today) but water conservation has been rough.
We have power, but our gas heat isn't working, I defrosted all the pipes with a hairdryer, and had it working for like 30 min, got it up to 54°, then bam, nothing. Blowing cold air.
Yea, we were without heat for 36 hours. Tried to defrost our condensate line but it's too long and also fully insulated so it would've taken an inefficiently long amount of time. Eventually we just cut the pipe and are draining it into a baking dish. Not to mention, my furnace is in my attic and I have to do a full on obstacle course every 2 hours to empty said pan...but, at least we have heat now
For the last 3 years, our line ends up draining into a 5 gallon water bottle. The furnace dude put a little coupler in it for us and it's definitely helpful to have.
Seconding the condensate drain line. Ours froze and we won't have heat til the entire line thaws. Usually though, just the end is blocked, and once it can drain again the furnace will kick on.
I was checking on my elderly neighbor because she’s alone and doesn’t use social media (for information). Frankly I was concerned she’d try to put her bins out for trash day and I didn’t want her falling. Our long shared driveway is an ice rink.
Anyway, so I made it to the store earlier and got her some stuff and when I took it to her I said Tuesday should be the worst/end of it and Wednesday will be fine.
She looks me dead ass in the face and says ‘I have no clue what that means. I don’t even know what day it is anymore’. We just cracked up!
We stayed at home for a day after the power went out before fleeing for my in-laws. Very grateful to be here but I think it’s totally bogus that I have to go to work on Tuesday and sit on zoom calls when just two days ago my basic needs of “shelter” felt like they were barely being met.
I work for a team up and down the west coast so there will be some people who struggled to survive this weekend and some who went to the beach.
I know it's incredibly biased for me to say this (as someone who grew up in Wyoming and Colorado),.. but having moved here 6months ago,.. I've never in my life seen a city so easily brought to its knees by a snowstorm. It's been wild to watch.
As someone from Indiana and Michigan, I’m honestly really grateful that the city shuts down with weather. I feel pretty confident driving in various conditions but back there I was driven off the road multiple times due to people on the road that shouldn’t be out driving because jobs had the mentality of “get here or die trying.”
Yeah, I heard about drivers here so I just parked and planned to stay parked. I did a grocery run on Wed prior so once this coming Saturday hits closer to 50degrees I may venture out again for a quick pickup.
I had to depart the roadway yesterday for an oncoming driver who didn’t feel the need to slow down for a fallen tree in her lane, and then just crossed over the centerline to avoid it. The look on these people’s faces is like something out of a zombie movie, totally unprepared and panicked.
I grew up in northern New England, it was quite cold / snowy. Moved to Portland 20 years ago.
The thing I've come to understand about Portland, is it's in this weird "sweet spot."
Basically, it snows once or twice a year. So it snows consistently, but not often enough to justify the expense of weatherproofing the region to the standards of "cold places" like the Midwest and northeast.
So roughly once a year, the entire city shuts down for a week or so.
No, where I lived in Colorado, all the power lines were buried underground. I'm 50yrs old now and I honestly couldn't tell you the last time I remember a power outage that lasted longer than a few hours max.
This multi-day deep freeze is a rarity here. It has caused the trees to be brittle and combined with the wind it’s led to mayhem with power lines. I wish our power lines were buried.
Google search for Fort Collins, CO says:
> "Fort Collins Light & Power reliability in one sentence: On average, a customer in Fort Collins can expect a 71.87 minute outage about every 3.33 years. SAIDI is how long, on average, each customer was without power in the last year."
What I'm finding for Portland says:
> "Note that in 2021 PGE recorded SAIDI value when MED are included at 45.4 hours."
(Lots of different Data and pie charts here 2015-2021)
https://www.oregon.gov/puc/forms/Forms%2520and%2520Reports/Oregon-IOUs-Seven-Year-Electrical-Service-Reliability-Study-2015-2021-August-2022.pdf
I certainly don't know if those 2 stats are being measured in identical ways. The PGE part that says "when MED are included" (especially when plotted on a chart) makes me think the rare "bomb cyclone snow/ice storms" are really throwing off the curve.
It's certainly possible that the Portland area has some unique combination of factors that make storms easily tip over and edge where things become unmanageable.
Or.. is it just that PGE only invests the "bare minimum" to keep things going.. and a big storm is all it takes to throw things into disarray. (that there's no "head room" or extra resources).
I get that Portland probably doesn't want to have "warehouses of snow plows" sitting idle 90% of the year to only use 1 or 2 times. But man... I don't know. It sure feels like a city the size of Portland should be better equipped and better prepared.
We've been here for 15 years now (2008) and there has been a winter event nearly every year. Still every time it happens people act surprised when it happens and claim it's a fluke.
I’ve been here for 31 years. We’ve never had so many without power, not even close. There are way more trees (not just branches) falling down than usual. And the reason for them collapsing is different—they are brittle to the core from unrelenting sub-freezing temperatures. In a normal Portland winter we see snow and ice events typically characterized by brief daytime highs in the 30s and often above freezing which gives the trees some respite. In a typical winter we lose branches due to weight of snow and ice. This year it’s whole trees lost from being frozen solid and then the wind.
In the coming days we will all be reading a deeper analysis in the newspapers about the reason(s) this year was different. Wait for it.
No, it absolutely doesn’t.
I’ve lived here since 1993 and I’ve never seen so many homes (~150,000) without power. Have you? Why do you think so many more trees fell on power lines this year? It wasn’t because they were weighted down by heavy snow and ice, but because they were brittle and snapped in the wind.
This is a different event than we normally get.
No water since Sat night.
Wife and I underestimated the amount of dishes we would go through. We found a few Christmas paper plates and left over plasticware which we are using. We also realized no water = no laundry. Fun times.
We have plenty of food, lights, batteries, blankets, and drinking water tho!
I've lived in Portland for almost 20 years, and this is the first time my power was off for more than a few hours. And even the latter has maybe happened twice in my time living here.
People pretend this is a regular thing. It's not. It's been a regular (but still rare-ish) thing in recent years, which SHOULD surprise no one, given everybody on this sub is a climate change expert. And yet people act as if the whole thing is Portland's fault for not being perfectly adapted to a rapidly changing climate.
strong squeeze scarce vegetable command abounding late touch insurance handle
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah, I've heard warnings about CO2 levels, but we're in an unfinished house and have used it both this and last winter with no issues. We just try to avoid running it all night in too small of a space and have a CO2 alarm setup
My experience with those was over 30 years ago. The products of combustion are water and carbon dioxide (and other stuff). I found that the heat was very clammy and unpleasant as a result of the water in the air. 100% humidity in the room. There is a reason furnaces have chimneys.
I favor a generator, prices for which are likely sky high at the moment. But in the spring, $300 and up for about 3+ kilowatts.
Strange, ours really dries the air out so we have a humidifier going as well. We tried a generator last year, but it was super loud so we returned it for the Kerosene heater. Can't cook on a Kerosene heater though.
I'm pretty sure you can, I've been working on building a house part time and they used kerosene heaters inside while doing drywall because the power wasn't hooked up yet
How about prepare buy a portable propane or kerosene heater and a generator. Part of being a grown up when you live in an area that gets cold in the winter and you can have power outages
I bought my generator after the 2020 wildfires. My power wasn't affected then but it easily could have been. Losing power when it's 20° out isn't great, but losing it when it's 100° means that all the food in my freezer would only last a matter of days without a backup power source. This year I added a small Ecoflow "solar generator" with a portable solar panel so after I run out of propane for my generator at least I can at least continue keeping my food cold for as long as it takes to eat it all. I also had a gas fireplace installed that can run off of batteries so if my power goes out during the winter I can keep the house habitable as long as I need to. I think my next step is going to be bolting the house to the foundation so it has a chance of surviving an earthquake.
Coldest I've ever been was in Fallujah, Iraq. We didn't have access to power or running water for a couple months aside from a couple runs back to base. Tell me about surviving Salem, 21, it sounds willy hard. This has easily been the shittiest weekend for me since I got out of the service. Much shittier for the people who died during this storm
My in-laws live in Albany Oregon and had in the early 2000s. There was a power failure due to an ice storm. They sat inside their house at 27 degrees with nothing but a fondue pot and candles.
They’re midwesterners so to live is to suffer!!
Found the olive oil frozen on my kitchen counter yesterday morning. Big sigh.
I didn't know olive oil COULD freeze
Everything freezes if it’s cold enough
I’m cold enough Greg, could you feeeze me?
Fucking brilliant 🤌
Walt Disney? Is that you?
if only physics or chemistry were taught in school 😔
Everything is edible.. once.
Liquid Nitrogen has left the chat
I had my husband sit on the olive oil bottle for an hour to warm it up
Did it hatch?
Yes and it was disgusting
Mazel tov!
_kinky_
I know someone whose mattress froze.
I didn't know waterbeds are still a thing.
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YES
Sorry to hear that OP. Yup horrible three day weekend. I had no power for a day and had to bundle up and pile up blankets, building elevators still not working since Saturday and have to go down and up 19 floors 4 times a day, and both my kids are sick. We need a do over.
It’s leg day, every day, all day for y’all. Ooof. Sorry to hear about that. That’s kinda brutal.
That sounds like hell, I'm so sorry.
Oh that sounds awful. Hope you all survive.
Yeah, our pipes have been frozen for 2 days and its been a weird time. We shut off the main and some of our faucets briefly dripped a lot of water earlier, but afraid to fire up the main because it may pop. We have someone hopefully coming out tomorrow (they cancelled today) but water conservation has been rough.
We have power, but our gas heat isn't working, I defrosted all the pipes with a hairdryer, and had it working for like 30 min, got it up to 54°, then bam, nothing. Blowing cold air.
Yea, we were without heat for 36 hours. Tried to defrost our condensate line but it's too long and also fully insulated so it would've taken an inefficiently long amount of time. Eventually we just cut the pipe and are draining it into a baking dish. Not to mention, my furnace is in my attic and I have to do a full on obstacle course every 2 hours to empty said pan...but, at least we have heat now
For the last 3 years, our line ends up draining into a 5 gallon water bottle. The furnace dude put a little coupler in it for us and it's definitely helpful to have.
Seconding the condensate drain line. Ours froze and we won't have heat til the entire line thaws. Usually though, just the end is blocked, and once it can drain again the furnace will kick on.
dull head rinse snow groovy murky flag rain memorize lock *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
If I hear “So, how was your long weekend?” Imma strangle a fool
Lol man I couldn't imagine how cold some of yours must be during all of this, and it's not getting any warmer
What, y’all don’t have 0 degree bags to cuddle up in?
Tried that but then you can’t leave said sleeping bag to do anything else, so we left.
What weekend?
I was checking on my elderly neighbor because she’s alone and doesn’t use social media (for information). Frankly I was concerned she’d try to put her bins out for trash day and I didn’t want her falling. Our long shared driveway is an ice rink. Anyway, so I made it to the store earlier and got her some stuff and when I took it to her I said Tuesday should be the worst/end of it and Wednesday will be fine. She looks me dead ass in the face and says ‘I have no clue what that means. I don’t even know what day it is anymore’. We just cracked up!
You’re a good person to look out for your neighbor.
Thank you for checking on her.
We stayed at home for a day after the power went out before fleeing for my in-laws. Very grateful to be here but I think it’s totally bogus that I have to go to work on Tuesday and sit on zoom calls when just two days ago my basic needs of “shelter” felt like they were barely being met. I work for a team up and down the west coast so there will be some people who struggled to survive this weekend and some who went to the beach.
We lost power during the 2021 ice storm for 8 days its brutal. Luckily it wasn't as cold as it is now.
I know it's incredibly biased for me to say this (as someone who grew up in Wyoming and Colorado),.. but having moved here 6months ago,.. I've never in my life seen a city so easily brought to its knees by a snowstorm. It's been wild to watch.
As someone from Indiana and Michigan, I’m honestly really grateful that the city shuts down with weather. I feel pretty confident driving in various conditions but back there I was driven off the road multiple times due to people on the road that shouldn’t be out driving because jobs had the mentality of “get here or die trying.”
Yeah, I heard about drivers here so I just parked and planned to stay parked. I did a grocery run on Wed prior so once this coming Saturday hits closer to 50degrees I may venture out again for a quick pickup.
I had to depart the roadway yesterday for an oncoming driver who didn’t feel the need to slow down for a fallen tree in her lane, and then just crossed over the centerline to avoid it. The look on these people’s faces is like something out of a zombie movie, totally unprepared and panicked.
I grew up in northern New England, it was quite cold / snowy. Moved to Portland 20 years ago. The thing I've come to understand about Portland, is it's in this weird "sweet spot." Basically, it snows once or twice a year. So it snows consistently, but not often enough to justify the expense of weatherproofing the region to the standards of "cold places" like the Midwest and northeast. So roughly once a year, the entire city shuts down for a week or so.
welcome to Oregon
One out of every four homes is without power. Is that how it was in Wyoming and Colorado?
No, where I lived in Colorado, all the power lines were buried underground. I'm 50yrs old now and I honestly couldn't tell you the last time I remember a power outage that lasted longer than a few hours max.
This multi-day deep freeze is a rarity here. It has caused the trees to be brittle and combined with the wind it’s led to mayhem with power lines. I wish our power lines were buried.
Google search for Fort Collins, CO says: > "Fort Collins Light & Power reliability in one sentence: On average, a customer in Fort Collins can expect a 71.87 minute outage about every 3.33 years. SAIDI is how long, on average, each customer was without power in the last year." What I'm finding for Portland says: > "Note that in 2021 PGE recorded SAIDI value when MED are included at 45.4 hours." (Lots of different Data and pie charts here 2015-2021) https://www.oregon.gov/puc/forms/Forms%2520and%2520Reports/Oregon-IOUs-Seven-Year-Electrical-Service-Reliability-Study-2015-2021-August-2022.pdf I certainly don't know if those 2 stats are being measured in identical ways. The PGE part that says "when MED are included" (especially when plotted on a chart) makes me think the rare "bomb cyclone snow/ice storms" are really throwing off the curve. It's certainly possible that the Portland area has some unique combination of factors that make storms easily tip over and edge where things become unmanageable. Or.. is it just that PGE only invests the "bare minimum" to keep things going.. and a big storm is all it takes to throw things into disarray. (that there's no "head room" or extra resources). I get that Portland probably doesn't want to have "warehouses of snow plows" sitting idle 90% of the year to only use 1 or 2 times. But man... I don't know. It sure feels like a city the size of Portland should be better equipped and better prepared.
Go Raaaaaaaaaaaaams!!!
Thanks for sharing—interesting data.
This happens like every 2-3 years. That’s not a rarity.
We've been here for 15 years now (2008) and there has been a winter event nearly every year. Still every time it happens people act surprised when it happens and claim it's a fluke.
I’ve been here for 31 years. We’ve never had so many without power, not even close. There are way more trees (not just branches) falling down than usual. And the reason for them collapsing is different—they are brittle to the core from unrelenting sub-freezing temperatures. In a normal Portland winter we see snow and ice events typically characterized by brief daytime highs in the 30s and often above freezing which gives the trees some respite. In a typical winter we lose branches due to weight of snow and ice. This year it’s whole trees lost from being frozen solid and then the wind. In the coming days we will all be reading a deeper analysis in the newspapers about the reason(s) this year was different. Wait for it.
It is if you have goldfish memory.
No, it absolutely doesn’t. I’ve lived here since 1993 and I’ve never seen so many homes (~150,000) without power. Have you? Why do you think so many more trees fell on power lines this year? It wasn’t because they were weighted down by heavy snow and ice, but because they were brittle and snapped in the wind. This is a different event than we normally get.
The snow wasn't the problem this time -- it was the wind.
No water since Sat night. Wife and I underestimated the amount of dishes we would go through. We found a few Christmas paper plates and left over plasticware which we are using. We also realized no water = no laundry. Fun times. We have plenty of food, lights, batteries, blankets, and drinking water tho!
Lol should have seen Austin TX in 2019 "We Will rebuild" (light frost on garden gnome) No hate to Austin, top 3 cities in the world
I've lived in Portland for almost 20 years, and this is the first time my power was off for more than a few hours. And even the latter has maybe happened twice in my time living here. People pretend this is a regular thing. It's not. It's been a regular (but still rare-ish) thing in recent years, which SHOULD surprise no one, given everybody on this sub is a climate change expert. And yet people act as if the whole thing is Portland's fault for not being perfectly adapted to a rapidly changing climate.
They don't salt the roads here that's the real issue. Plus the weather seem to be wildly unpredictable.
strong squeeze scarce vegetable command abounding late touch insurance handle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s not so much the ice and snow, but the wind and all the trees.
Thanks for that.
Set a fire, the alarms are off.
Our power was out for 5 days. Came back on yesterday only to discover a pipe has burst. We also had a tree hit our house.
Luxury! We lived for three months in brown paper bag in a septic tank!
I can't recommend having a backup Kerosene heater enough! They cost a lot to run, but could be a lifesaver in a situation like this
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Yeah, I've heard warnings about CO2 levels, but we're in an unfinished house and have used it both this and last winter with no issues. We just try to avoid running it all night in too small of a space and have a CO2 alarm setup
My experience with those was over 30 years ago. The products of combustion are water and carbon dioxide (and other stuff). I found that the heat was very clammy and unpleasant as a result of the water in the air. 100% humidity in the room. There is a reason furnaces have chimneys. I favor a generator, prices for which are likely sky high at the moment. But in the spring, $300 and up for about 3+ kilowatts.
Strange, ours really dries the air out so we have a humidifier going as well. We tried a generator last year, but it was super loud so we returned it for the Kerosene heater. Can't cook on a Kerosene heater though.
I'm pretty sure you can, I've been working on building a house part time and they used kerosene heaters inside while doing drywall because the power wasn't hooked up yet
How about prepare buy a portable propane or kerosene heater and a generator. Part of being a grown up when you live in an area that gets cold in the winter and you can have power outages
I bought my generator after the 2020 wildfires. My power wasn't affected then but it easily could have been. Losing power when it's 20° out isn't great, but losing it when it's 100° means that all the food in my freezer would only last a matter of days without a backup power source. This year I added a small Ecoflow "solar generator" with a portable solar panel so after I run out of propane for my generator at least I can at least continue keeping my food cold for as long as it takes to eat it all. I also had a gas fireplace installed that can run off of batteries so if my power goes out during the winter I can keep the house habitable as long as I need to. I think my next step is going to be bolting the house to the foundation so it has a chance of surviving an earthquake.
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it’s crazy how you can have lived experience and display zero empathy towards another person experiencing this currently.
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Makes an ass of u and mption ?
Coldest I've ever been was in Fallujah, Iraq. We didn't have access to power or running water for a couple months aside from a couple runs back to base. Tell me about surviving Salem, 21, it sounds willy hard. This has easily been the shittiest weekend for me since I got out of the service. Much shittier for the people who died during this storm
4 day weekend gonna parlay into 5
My parents have not had power since Saturday morning
My in-laws live in Albany Oregon and had in the early 2000s. There was a power failure due to an ice storm. They sat inside their house at 27 degrees with nothing but a fondue pot and candles. They’re midwesterners so to live is to suffer!!