August 14, 2003 blackout.

When the lights wet out, I just packed up and left work. Sitting at a light to get on the Tatonic south, the only radio station I could find was some Albany station running on generator. At that point I relized that the black out was pretty extensive.

Cheers

I remember it vividly. I was visiting IBM Poughkeepsie at the time, and had to drive home in what instantly became rush hour, with no traffic signals functioning. Good thing I had a full tank of gas.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Never experienced a blackout, but in the early '90's we had one of our regularly occurring "100 year" rain storms... took me nearly THREE hours to get home to North Scottsdale from Deer Valley, normally a

Fortunately traffic was moving so slowly I was able to bail out and run behind a building and take a leak ;-) ...Jim Thompson

I've never been in one that massive, but it had to be better than having no electricity for months after a hurricane. :(

I was caught in a blizzard in SW Ohio, when I worked in Cincinnati. I burnt a full tank of gasoline t get home, and it took almost ten hours to drive 45 miles in the high winds, driving snow and on the iced over I-75.

People from that area keep posting 'Do you remember' messages about that storm. I would like to forget it.

Here I thought you had just bought that big boat anchor off EBay, plugged it in Griswold style, flicked the power switch and ... *PHUT*

We had a big one in the Northwest when I worked at an ultrasound company near Seattle. "Oh, look at those HV lines in the distance!" They were swinging in the wind and then touching ... BZZZT .. *PHOOF* ... you could see sparks flying tens of miles away. Lights out everywhere. What I found most unbelievable was the silence in a large company full of cubicles once power is gone.

It was a big snow storm so driving home was out for many. Those of us living closest just took in folks. Since we were in the middle of an important technical discussion and the air in the building became funky we headed out to my apartment and continued it there. Luckily my fridge was well stocked with Redhook ESB and other good stuff, making for a much more pleasant and productive meeting than we could ever have at the company. I had luckily also stocked up on firewood even though it was a temporary apartment. The beer had to be moved into the snow outside the patio door as the fridge wouldn't cool anymore.

LED flashlights would have really helped back then. OTOH not having any prevented too much overtime into the night. Funny thing, nobody complained that we couldn't watch TV.

^^^^^^^ Taconic (State Parkway)?

I was living in Vermont at the time - having a beer. The candles worked.

I lived in Columbus, OH which was not affected but was on way to visit fami ly in Detroit. On the way up I stopped in a store and got 10 gallons of wa ter and ice with no problems at all and drove to Detroit where clean water was a big deal because the water was not fit to use from the faucet for man y days after the power came back on.

Southeastern New England had enough warning to shed some load and jump the f*ck off. Boston was mostly unaffected and AFAIK Pilgrim remained fully operational.

I like the idea that the birth rates spike 9 months after a big blackout.

Yea, Taconic. actually not far from where Phil resides.

The power was off in most areas for less than a day; given how brief it was and the naturally fairly wide spread in delivery dates (just looked the bell curve ranges from 35 to 45 weeks) I don't see how any spike would be distinguishable in the 1/f noise.

Could make a solid argument that people probably have _less_ sex during a blackout due to say anxiety etc.