So, for posterity, we had a freakish out of season snowstorm on October 29th. Because there were still leaves on the trees, the snow pulled down many, many branches and whole trees. If you aren’t in the area, it’s really hard to explain just how massive the damage was and how, over a week later, it’s still not even really cleaned up. It’s like, it’s just snow, what’s the big deal, right? Many areas look like a tornado ripped through. Trees are snapped in half, big branches down everywhere, whole trees have fallen into the road and… just left there. Driving in some areas is… interesting.

But many trees down meant many power lines down. We lost power between 3 and 4 PM on Saturday, October 29th. We didn’t get it back until the evening of November 3rd. Our neighborhood of 400 homes was completely dark for 5 days. It was very freaky looking. (What deity has it out for Denville, man? Our poor downtown was completely trashed by the Hurricane Irene flood and this time we were the top town in NJ with number of houses without power.)

We were very lucky that our house has gas so we had hot water, use of our gas fireplace and could cook using our gas stove so we definitely were better off than many but it was still very annoying (and COLD). We were also very lucky that my parents, who live nearby, got power back on Sunday so we temporarily moved in with them starting Monday night (though we kept coming back to the house for a few hours each day out of the deluded hope the power would come back). I know the crews worked very hard to get everyone’s power back and I also know that many houses, including some friends, didn’t get their power back until even later than us so I have no complaints re: the crews and power companies.

One complaint I do have, though, is directed towards the news. Because we get the New York news stations in NJ, all the weather reports were like, “We may get a little snow tomorrow, tee hee!” when they should have been like, “Holy crap, total tree devastation, expect a week without power.” I guess if you live in NY, it was just Tee Hee Snow which was all they cared about but, living in NJ or CT, it would have been nice to have had a heads up of just how bad the situation was going to be. Maybe we are just dumb but it didn’t occur to most of us that Trees + Leaves still on the trees + Snow = Huge mess and I can’t help but feel like the news should have pointed this out. They said snow, we were thinking about normal snow storms past when really we had no idea what we’d be dealing with. There’s a big difference between the news saying, “You may lose power.” and “You WILL more than likely lose power and the power will be out for up to a week in many areas.” When you’ve never had power out for more than 12 hours before in your life, you’re not expecting a simple snowstorm to knock out your power for 124 hours.  That was the #1 complaint I kept hearing from people in person and on the news: some freaking warning would have been nice.

The biggest casualty was the contents of our refrigerator though we were able to keep more food than most because I filled every Tupperware-like container in our house with snow and shoved it in the fridge and freezer. This actually worked pretty well. What can I say, I’m a smart cookie. 😉

Anyway, we were very lucky all things considered so it was just a minor inconvenience for us. I just figured I should write up some notes about this while it was somewhat fresh in my mind.

One thing that was a little funny was how it affected my NaNoWriMo area. We had an online kick-off party for Northeast NJ and almost everyone there was like, “I’m at a hotel,” “I’m at my friend’s house,” or “I’m at my parents,” because many had no power and were mooching off someone else. We were like writer refugees huddled anywhere there was power so we could write our novels like the freaks we are. 🙂 In a silly little way, I found that heartwarming.

The outage was good for one thing, though. Without access to 90% of what I need to do my day job, I really couldn’t do much else during the day but write so I got ahead on NaNo in the beginning. Of course, I squandered my early lead once the power came back and I had to do a week’s worth of real work in a day but what can you do? Also? It was a nice little reminder not to take things like electricity for granted.

Oh, and there is absolutely no place like home!

Anyway, were you effected by the October snow?

Related articles

• N.J. residents blindsided by fall snowstorm regroup among downed trees and widespread power outages (nj.com)