The last storm to pass through this part of California brought lots of rain, but also serious wind. The result was that quite a few in our area spent two or three days or President’s Day weekend without electric power. Huge (non-native) eucalyptus trees were toppled over by the storm taking out power lines and poles. Smaller ones blocked neighbors’ driveways and / or broke fences. The road leading to ours was blocked for hours due to the many eucalyptus trees which had fallen across the road. For some time, the only exit from this street was to drive past a road closed sign and under a branch which went over the road to lean on the top of a power pole on the other side.
Unlike some of our neighbors, we had taken precautions for a prolonged power outage. When the house was built, the design included a way to use an external generator to power most of needed items. In addition to keeping refrigerated and frozen food items from being ruined, this is really important since we aren’t on a city water supply. It was easy enough to get by without using the electric oven for a few days, and we could have managed without the heater, but without water pressure, things would have quickly become annoying.
After almost two and a half days, we were back on the power grid again and enjoying the quiet of the countryside without noisy generator. There is another wave of rain and wind scheduled to come through shortly, so the quiet could be short lived. Alongside the road water is running through what has dry creek throughout the drought years. There are many more large eucalyptus trees along the creek’s edges which could meet the same fate of those which disrupted things a few days ago.