Lepolt.com » weather

No Power Means No Shower

Jonathan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:28:49 +0000

This past Sunday Hurricane Ike pummeled Cincinnati and the surrounding areas with wind. We’re not talking about some lame breeze you get in the springtime with bunnies hopping around and flowers blooming; this was the kind of wind that didn’t think about sucker punching you in the gut, knocking you down, and then kicking you in the groin. 70+ mile per hour winds were uprooting trees from the ground, ripping roof shingles off houses, and tearing fences apart. These winds also directly or indirectly caused power outages to over one million Duke Energy customers. Unfortunately for Abi and me, we were one of those customers.

We actually ended up losing power around 3:00pm Sunday afternoon. It flickered on and off a few times until finally settling on off. No big deal, right? It will come back on sooner or later…or not.

2.5 days later power was restored to our house. As of 1:30pm today there still are over 297,000 customers that aren’t nearly as lucky as we are. Regardless, I’d like to recap the past 2.5 days as a list of things that were good, bad, ugly, ridiculous, etc. Here we go:

The good

After the wind was done blowing on Sunday, the temperatures dropped into the 50-60s at night, and 70s during the day. This meant that we weren’t going to freeze to death, nor would we sweat to death.
Although Hurricane Ohio was tough, we never saw more than a sprinkle of rain.
Our 40 gallon water heater managed to keep enough hot water stored up so we could take minimal showers.
Team Lammi was supportive throughout this whole catastrophe, as they offered up their hot food and some electricity (hopefully we don’t get a bill).

The bad

After 2.5 days we had to toss out a bunch of food. This was by far the thing that upset me most about the power outage.
Busy intersections with broken stoplights. At least most people realized they were four-way stops.

The ridiculous

A few people in our neighborhood were running generators to keep part of their houses powered. Which parts I have no idea. I do know that we saw one guy siphoning gas from his car so that he could run the generator a little longer. Hmmmm, necessary? I think not.

The ugly

The number of people that thought the world was going to end because of a power outage.

Insult to injury

Tuesday morning Abi and I were leaving for work when we found out that Abi’s car battery had died. D’oh! Good thing Autozone was open until 10pm.

Things I’m glad we had

Bread
Peanut butter
Honey (goes great with the bread and peanut butter)
Random snack food
Flashlights with charged batteries
Tons of candles
Matches + lighter
Cars with gasoline
Grill with propane
Friends with power

Things I wish we had

Ice
Generator (mostly for the fridge)
Bottled water
Ice
Dry ice
More ice

Problems for others

Missing roof shingles
Missing siding
Exposed plywood on roof and/or side of house

At 12:49am this morning our power came back on. Things can get back to normal at Casa de Lepolt.

Oh, White Death, How I Loathe Thee

Jonathan — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:38:51 +0000

Listen: I’ll be the first to say that if it’s going to be cold, it might as well snow. But hold on; there are some stipulations that belong with that statement, and apparently Mother Nature didn’t check her voicemail (either that or she finds joy is screwing with the city).

Jonathan Lepolt’s Snow Rules:

If it’s going to snow, don’t do it while I’m away from home.
If it’s going to snow when I’m away from home, especially don’t do it when I’m 30 miles from home in Mason, OH.

Yes, you guessed it. I got stuck driving home from work in the snow again. Some of you may find this funny. Screw you. Some of you may feel my pain. I’m about to start a support group, and everyone is welcome.

So it turns out this blog entry is going to be another rant about the weather in Cincinnati, moronic drivers, and the lack of competence of the local meteorologists. Last week you may recall that I put a poll up on my blog asking people to vote on how much snow we would get overnight. Meteorologists predicted 3-5 inches, and we ended up with about one inch and a nice coating of ice. All I saw on the TV was weather people, weather watches, weather warnings, weather updates, weather-related closings, and salt trucks on call to react to the weather. On my two-hour drive home today in a stretch of about 30 miles, I think I only saw two salt trucks.

Kevin should be able to attest to that.

So where were you on this one, weather people? On my way into work around 7am they said the snow wasn’t going to start until 5 or 6pm. Abi said I’m full of crap and they said the snow was going to start at 3pm, but I think they changed their minds once they figured out how stupid they were. Oh well, I enjoy stop-and-go traffic on the Interstates. After all, who needs a 65mph speed limit?

*Allow me to step off of my soapbox*

So, how ‘bout them Bearcats? Not looking too bad this season after all, and we are sure getting our money’s worth in these close games. Anyone predicting 2008 NCAA Tournament?

Poll: Predicted Snow, Sleet, and Freezing Rain

Jonathan — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:28:19 +0000

I point to a previous post.

Weather.com says: …WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 7 PM THIS EVENING TO 12 PM EST TUESDAY…

A MIXTURE OF SNOW…SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN WILL DEVELOP TONIGHT AND WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THE TUESDAY MORNING. PRECIPITATION WILL BECOME A MIX OF RAIN AND SNOW DURING TUESDAY AFTERNOON. TOTAL SNOW AND SLEET ACCUMULATIONS OF 3 TO 5 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE THROUGH TUESDAY…WITH ICE ACCUMULATIONS AROUND A QUARTER OF AN INCH.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Snow: Friend or Enemy?

Jonathan — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:24:00 +0000

Ah yes, winter time. The leaves fall off trees, the temperature drops, Christmas season comes upon us, and the number of reported chimney fires increases exponentially like Nintendo Wii sales this year. And it snows. In Cincinnati it snows…maybe not a lot, but enough to shut down the city. Up until last year I used to make fun of the people in this area for freaking out about a little bit of snow. Being from Northern Ohio driving in the snow was never a big deal. For five years in Cincinnati I never thought that driving in the snow was a big deal. So what, it’s slippery? Hit the brakes a little lighter and a little sooner and you will be sure to stop BEFORE the intersection.

I want to tell a little story about my experience last winter with snow and how my respect for Cincinnati snow has increased dramatically when snow meets hills. It was any old Tuesday afternoon in January, and the meteorologists were predicting a large snow storm that afternoon that would continue into the evening. “Big deal,” I thought, “get over it. It’s just a little snow.” Around 1pm or so the snow started falling; big flakes blowing in the wind beginning to cover everything on the ground. What a beautiful site. It remained pretty solid for most of the afternoon. Around 3pm my boss started walking around the office letting people that lived far away from work leave early to avoid getting stuck in traffic. I thought he was being a little cautious, but nonetheless I took his offer and headed for home.

This is where the fun begins.

I live about 30 miles from work. It generally takes me 30-35 minutes to get home with no traffic. I figured the roads would be a little messy, and it might take me an hour this time. I actually thought that. One hour. Oops.

To spare some of the details, it took me 2.5 hours in stop-and-go traffic to get to the entrance to my apartment complex. Wow, 2.5 hours and I am still just almost there. I’ll just drive up this hill and we’ll call it a day. Gravity was against me. Gravity was against my manual-transmission car and me. I could not get enough traction on the ground to move forward…in 1st or 2nd gear. I had no chance to get any momentum to even try to get up the hill. After about 30 minutes of moving almost nowhere, I finally threw in the white flag, parked my car, and walk the rest of the way up to my apartment. A full three hours after I had left work.

So, what have we learned here? Well, maybe Cincinnatians aren’t being completely ridiculous when they cry and moan about all of the snow, but lack of driving skills sure doesn’t help the situation. I think this year I may carry some chains in my trunk.