Yesterday in the early evening my area in Washington DC metro area got hit particularly hard by what is known as a “bow echo storm”, a storm front curved backwards, seen as extending from horizon to horizon and producing continuously along its length strong downdrafts that when they hit the ground spread out as very powerful horizontal winds, in this case peaking at 70 mph around where I live.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_echo
“A bow echo is the characteristic radar return from a mesoscale convective system that is shaped like an archer’s bow. These systems can produce severe straight-line winds and occasionally tornadoes, causing major damage. They can also become derechos or form Line echo wave pattern (LEWP).”
The spectacle was amazing, with the rain falling horizontally in powerful curtains, as if gushing intermittently from a huge fire hose, while the majestic trees framing the edge of the property where my high-rise apartment stands were shaking and swaying as if they were so many tufts of grass.
All of the above observed in twilight darkness, because although the sun was still up, the cloud cover was very thick, the scene illuminated sporadically by big flashes of thunderous lightning.
The whole thing lasted less than twenty minutes because, as such storms do, it moved very fast, its departure revealing a scary, angry red sky, but it also left my neighborhood and my apartment in what was to be a prolonged darkness, having downed power lines and causing a blackout that, in the event and in my place, was going to last 26 hours. In the whole area affected, that covered several counties, the total number of houses left in the dark in such a very short time was more than 200,000.
So I proceeded to lit candles and to live with no internet and, therefore without email and other things I use often, or most of the time, because the fiberoptics connection Optical Network Terminal box (ONT) in my apartment is powered from the mains, as is the router, and the mains was the power supply that was now out. My landline phone was also out, because it receives its signals from the same fiber connection, and fiber cannot deliver power to the phone the way copper lines did from the telephone exchange when they were still in use.
So, for 26 hours, it was mostly living as before electricity, except for four things: my wrist-watch, powered by a tiny battery, was still working, my cellphone as well, the same as my pretty powerful rechargeable flashlight (then with noway to recharge) and, equally important, my trusty CCrane-2e multi band radio (that I bought to replace my old one after it gave up its ghost, on advice of radio enthusiasts here at AskWoody) so now I could listen to a local all-news FM station and learn about the situation outside my building and about the blackout and the repair efforts to end it, as well as to the National Weather Service warnings and other useful information, in the Weather band.
Now I have the problem of getting rid of all that was in the freezer, that first defrosted and then stood in 70 degrees for so many hours without refrigeration. And wondering how long to wait before replacing all that at the supermarket, trusting that by then supplies there are going to be fresh and OK once more.
This video shows clearly the effects of this brief storm in a neighborhood in my general area.
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV
