![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I have a new appreciation of those (like my sister in Pace, Florida) who experience hurricanes with some regularity. The remnants of Ike passed close to Cincinnati yesterday, and with it, brought several hours of wind (though not much rain). We had, at one point, sustained winds of over 50 mph with occasional gusts of hurricane force (80mpg+). We're lucky to have electric; 80 - 90% of the Cincinnati area does not. Denise have covered much of this in her post. I have a slightly different tale...
The band had to play a gig in Columbus last night (which is about 100 miles northeast of us). My drive over to our keyboard player's house around 4:30 PM (so we could carpool up) was interesting, in that I did not encounter a single functioning traffic light. Already, most of the electric was out in the city. I had to skirt the car around several large branches in the road, stopping a couple of times to move the limbs out of the way for other drivers. Rick's backyard backs into a local park, Sharon Woods, and Rick and I stood there waiting for the other guys to arrive and twice heard huge cracks back in the woods as trees went down somewhere. The wind buffeted us -- I have to say that in the hours of the wind-storm, I felt gusts stronger than any I've ever experienced, once or twice enough to make me take a step backward to catch my balance again. We called Columbus first to make sure the hotel where we were playing actually had power (as we didn't relish a two-hour drive for nothing); they did. So we left.
As we drove north, the wind subsided a bit... until we got to near to Columbus, where the winds started to kick up again -- evidently Ike had chased us. We played the gig -- this was a gathering of local realtors; they'd sold 1,000 tickets to the event, but the crowd was more like 300; most people, with the weather, chose to stay home, I think. We played the gig without incident -- well, except for the truly horrible sound system and sound crew they'd hired -- but the eeriest part of the trip was the ride home.
I-71 between Columbus and Cincinnati is dotted with farms, small towns, and outlet store malls. There are generally lights everywhere, and the bottoms of clouds are illuminated by city-glow. Not tonight. We were driving through a clouded landscape that was utterly dark. If the sky had been clear, we would have seen a star vista like one sees out west far from the cities. There were occasional pockets of light where people had power, but for the most part, the electricity was out everywhere. We passed exit after exit that was entirely dark: no signs lit, not gas stations or restaurants or hotels open. The outlet malls sat in blackness. The rest areas were packed with trucks and cars -- evidently the word was out that if you were low on gas, you were out of luck. It was strange; we traveled through a landscape without any light except for those on the cars themselves.
Yet this was nothing compared to the actual, true fury of a hurricane. This was baby stuff compared to what the Gulf Cost or the Atlantic coast has experienced many times over the years. Makes one awe-struck at the power our world still has to throw at us puny folk...
The band had to play a gig in Columbus last night (which is about 100 miles northeast of us). My drive over to our keyboard player's house around 4:30 PM (so we could carpool up) was interesting, in that I did not encounter a single functioning traffic light. Already, most of the electric was out in the city. I had to skirt the car around several large branches in the road, stopping a couple of times to move the limbs out of the way for other drivers. Rick's backyard backs into a local park, Sharon Woods, and Rick and I stood there waiting for the other guys to arrive and twice heard huge cracks back in the woods as trees went down somewhere. The wind buffeted us -- I have to say that in the hours of the wind-storm, I felt gusts stronger than any I've ever experienced, once or twice enough to make me take a step backward to catch my balance again. We called Columbus first to make sure the hotel where we were playing actually had power (as we didn't relish a two-hour drive for nothing); they did. So we left.
As we drove north, the wind subsided a bit... until we got to near to Columbus, where the winds started to kick up again -- evidently Ike had chased us. We played the gig -- this was a gathering of local realtors; they'd sold 1,000 tickets to the event, but the crowd was more like 300; most people, with the weather, chose to stay home, I think. We played the gig without incident -- well, except for the truly horrible sound system and sound crew they'd hired -- but the eeriest part of the trip was the ride home.
I-71 between Columbus and Cincinnati is dotted with farms, small towns, and outlet store malls. There are generally lights everywhere, and the bottoms of clouds are illuminated by city-glow. Not tonight. We were driving through a clouded landscape that was utterly dark. If the sky had been clear, we would have seen a star vista like one sees out west far from the cities. There were occasional pockets of light where people had power, but for the most part, the electricity was out everywhere. We passed exit after exit that was entirely dark: no signs lit, not gas stations or restaurants or hotels open. The outlet malls sat in blackness. The rest areas were packed with trucks and cars -- evidently the word was out that if you were low on gas, you were out of luck. It was strange; we traveled through a landscape without any light except for those on the cars themselves.
Yet this was nothing compared to the actual, true fury of a hurricane. This was baby stuff compared to what the Gulf Cost or the Atlantic coast has experienced many times over the years. Makes one awe-struck at the power our world still has to throw at us puny folk...