14 Minutes Without Power

[canyonwalker]

We had a blackout in my neighborhood this morning. The lights flickered then died for a few seconds, then came back on for about 30 seconds, then flickered and failed again.

Fortunately the inconvenience wasn't huge. I hadn't started my workday yet, and Hawk had but she was on a conference call she could continue from her phone. Cell phone service continued to work fine— indicating that the electrical outage was limited to a few blocks at most, not impacting a broader area.

"Could this be weather related?" I wondered. Northern California is in for an "Atmospheric River" storm (aka the more deliciously named Pineapple Express) today through Friday. With high winds and heavy rains scattered power outages are not uncommon. But they are uncommon here. My town rarely gets the strong winds or rainfall others in the region do, and the power lines in our neighborhood are underground.

While the power was out I tried thinking back to when was the last time we lost power at my house. It's been years. When the power came back on I searched my blog and found this journal— from 7 years ago! And that outage lasted just 30 seconds. Today's outage lasted about 14 minutes. I don't think I've experienced an outage that long in my home in Silicon Valley since... ever. And I've lived here more than 25 years.

Comments

[some_other_dave]

When we lived in Palo Alto, we lost power for most of a day. That was when one of the Tesla executives flew out of Palo Alto airport, lost an engine, and crashed into East Palo Alto. It took out a bunch of power infrastructure that affected much of PA. The wreckage landed on a day care, thankfully before it had opened for the day so nobody on the ground was injured.