I normally post stories to Saturday Morning Garden Blog. It’s been an eventful three days in Dallas TX without power. Here’s what happened.
A violent thunderstorm targeted 60% of the metropolitan area of Dallas on Sunday, June 9, 2019. NO tornadoes were predicted — just a thunderstorm — so many of us were lulled into thinking it would be like hundreds of June storms before.
This time was very different. It felt like armageddon, especially for those who managed to escape a crane that fell backwards into a 5-story apartment complex. One woman died. The downtown Dallas apartment complex was evacuated and residents could take only what they could carry; the parking garage collapsed; cars buried under 5 stories of concrete and rubble. National news outlets have covered the story. Now multiple lawsuits from apartment residents against Bigge Crane have begun.
Here (about 10 miles northeast of apartment complex) around 1:45pm the sky darkened. Within 15 minutes the wind speed at ground level went from 6mph to calm to 71mph. Electricity was gone instantaneously (and everywhere). Massive 70 year old trees snapped or were completely uprooted and topped into streets, driveways, power lines, businesses and homes. Large branches became flying missiles. Torrential rain and golf ball size hail careened horizontally along the streets from north to south plundering everything in its path. Heart-pounding thunder cracked all around, hail sounded like gunshots, and the ground shook. Three inches of rain fell in approximately 45 minutes. Then silence. And disbelief.
Weather people said it was the equivalent of a tropical storm. However, it came from the northwest.
Everyone in the neighborhood, including me, spent Sunday/Monday/Tuesday surveying damage and cutting tree trunks and big branches into manageable pieces for Dallas storm crew pick up.
My power was restored yesterday about 5:30pm. Over 320,000 power outages were reported; at last count today at least 360 traffic lights are still inoperable. Traffic is a nightmare and tens of thousands of people still have no power. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/dallas/2019/06/10/after-storms-knocked-power-thousands-long-will-dallas-dark
I wish to publicly thank the electric crews and tree service crews from around Texas and Louisiana who came to help.
Navigating the neighborhood streets is still impossible because of traffic signals are out. A very few pics from my neighborhood follow.
Fifty-six (56) solar panels are installed on my roof. I consume my power directly from the panels and sell the rest to provider. And still I’m completely at the mercy of transmission lines and dead in the water for emergencies. Short of installing a Tesla powerwall for $8-10K, or buying a generator, there is no way to plug anything in when the lines are down.
I realize just how dependent I am on electricity to live: couldn’t charge phone except by running the car, no internet, no AC, no refrigerator, no ice within a 15 miles radius, no lights, no open grocery stores or restaurants, no bank, no operating gas stations, not enough candles on hand, manual opening of garage door, and absolutely no way to get news. My daughter (lives in western suburb) braved the traffic and brought me two charged ‘power banks’ yesterday afternoon just as crews restored power. This old dog needs to learn lots of new tricks to survive.
One thing to be eternally grateful for: the storm brought with it a cold front that dropped temperatures into the 60s rather than the usual 95o June heat.