BrianW

Skilled trades are booming here in CT. I can work pretty much endless overtime if I wanted. Huge shortage of state licensed hvac, electrical, plumbing, etc workers. There are huge sign on bonuses. All those jobs are mostly apprentice based jobs with zero college debt. Lineman made an absolute killing the last week. My neighbor who is one said he made over $10k working 16 hour days. Said he will make close to 200k this year . Its funny how back in the late 90s my High School gutted the entire tech ed department and converted it to classrooms...

“As a storm approaches, we engage a variety of different resources – including UConn’s predictive model and experts from outside weather services – to track the storm and forecast its severity and path. Based on the tools and guidance we received from our external experts, we followed our plan and filed for the appropriate level of classification. From the time we declared our initial level based on our best available tracking models at the end of last week, the storm’s path deviated from those models and we’ve reclassified the storm accordingly as our models dictated, which is a typical utility practice once a storm hits.” https://ctmirror.org/2020/08/05/lamont-says-it-will-take-days-to-recover-power/

Salt damage. It's really bad along the shoreline. My house and windows are covered in white salt residue.

That's impressive it went that far inland. Its really bad along the shoreline in Branford. All the oaks are like completely brown.

Special one even on the shoreline

I used this $500 Harbor Freight inverter generator for 3 days straight and then gave it to my mom. Its supposedly an exact clone of a Honda unit. It has a 1 gallon tank and sips fuel. Was getting 8-10 hours off a tank. Ran my fridge, lights, tv, window ac, etc. Get one if you don't own one. Worth every penny.

What a summer.

I'm wide open and get full sun. The last few months I had record production. I am looking into a battery/power wall as during power outages the panels shutdown to prevent backfeeding to the grid. I have a generator for when that happens though. Winter can be rough but I produce enough in the summer and get credited to carry me through the winter. CT and Mass have some of the best solar incentives in the nation. With such high electricity prices the payback period is 5-6 years. Both states will literally give you a check for thousands of dollars for installing them.

If you own a home in CT you should have a generator. It's astounding that people will spend 100's of thousands of dollars on a house but not a few hundred on a generator. How many times has this happened in CT? Eversource doesn't give a **** about you not having power. They own the entire electrical grid and are guaranteed a nice profit by PURA (Public Utility Regulatory Authority). All the cleanup cost is going to be passed on to rate payers and approved by PURA. This was announced the other day.

A crew from Hydro Quebec restored my power last night around 9. They were on a 4 pm to 8 am shift. Hooked them up with a ton of good New England beers and thanked them.

Tons more studies coming out about T-cell immunity. Its looking like a good majority of people are completely immune to covid. The blue links below are to to multiple studies supporting it. From a NY times article yesterday. Eight months ago, the new coronavirus was unknown. But to some of our immune cells, the virus was already something of a familiar foe. A flurry of recent studies has revealed that a large proportion of the population — 20 to 50 percent of people in some places — might harbor immunity assassins called T cells that recognize the new coronavirus despite having never encountered it before. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/health/coronavirus-immune-cells.html

Just get a cheap harbor freight 4500 watt portable for like $350. Mine is 10 years old and I have let so many people borrow it and it still runs great. You can run a few cords inside and power your fridge, lights, TV, window ac etc. They don't really use much fuel. I haven't even used 5 gallons since Tuesday afternoon. I just add gas every morning and night. For around $600 you can get a bigger portable one to feed your whole house with a transfer switch.

Almost all the big damage I have been seeing is from large trees well away from powerlines that came down across them. Trimming does nothing to prevent that.

Wesport definitely has the most damage I have seen so far in my travels. Its a disaster there. Eversource is reporting 97% of the town has no power with 12,257 outages. It looks like weeks worth of work to cleanup all the trees and down wires. Does anyone know who is responsible when huge tree on a homeowners property falls across the road? Seems they are everywhere and nothing is being done.

They basically took a gamble and lost big. Lineman make $50-75 an hour. When they bring crews in from out of state it cost a fortune. The lineman are on the clock 24/7 as soon as they leave. They are even paid when they are sleeping in hotel rooms overnight. They then get storm duty pay for actual work at 2 sometimes 3 times their regular pay. Lineman jump on out of state storm work as they make a fortune. Its a matter of the utilities bringing them in and paying for it.

I drive all over Fairfield County for work. Trees and wires are still down on roads all over the place. Its not just Eversources fault. Towns and the state haven't cleared roads. Also just heard on the radio that Frontier owns most of the poles not Eversource and they are a big part of the issue as well. I would expect you probably won't have power until late next week. Tons of commercial areas on Post Rd are still out. They focus on those spots first. If your on some rural residential road you are last on the list.

There are huge lines at gas stations in Fairfield County with people filling gas cans.

Eversource is supposedly going to announce later today to expect up to 11 days for power restoration in CT.

My neighbor is a lineman for Eversource. Going to be days and days before power comes back on for many. Southwest CT is a mess. About half of Eversource customers in CT still have no power.

CONNECTICUT ...FAIRFIELD COUNTY... BRIDGEPORT 68 330 PM 8/04 NOS-NWLON GREENWICH 67 230 PM 8/04 CWOP BRIDGEPORT AIRPORT 62 233 PM 8/04 ASOS BRIDGEPORT 55 215 PM 8/04 CWOP DANBURY AIRPORT 49 221 PM 8/04 ASOS ...MIDDLESEX COUNTY... 2 WSW CHESTER 52 435 PM 8/04 AWOS DURHAM 40 237 PM 8/04 CWOP ...NEW HAVEN COUNTY... LIGHTHOUSE POINT 66 328 PM 8/04 WXFLOW BETHANY 64 208 PM 8/04 CWOP WATERBURY AIRPORT 60 158 PM 8/04 AWOS NEW HAVEN AIRPORT 56 353 PM 8/04 ASOS MERIDEN AIRPORT 54 356 PM 8/04 ASOS EAST HAVEN 44 145 PM 8/04 CWOP NEW HAVEN 43 230 PM 8/04 CWOP ...NEW LONDON COUNTY... GROTON AIRPORT 58 537 PM 8/04 ASOS NEW LONDON; CT 52 530 PM 8/04 NOS-NWLON NEW LONDON 40 413 PM 8/04 CWOP

My neighbor is a lineman for Eversource. They can't start working until the winds die down for obvious safety reasons. Going to be awhile if you don't have power.

The New York Times has been publishing a bunch of teaser articles. Supposedly they are going to drop a bombshell story soon.

We are not alone.... Pentagon Has ‘Off-World Vehicles Not Made on This Earth’ Bombshell: The government’s once-clandestine UFO program will reveal findings on unexplained materials and crashes. The Pentagon's on-and-off-again, once-covert UFO program is decidedly back on—and will soon reveal some of its findings to the public. An astrophysicist who consulted on the UFO program confirms the government possesses materials from “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.” The news comes on the heels of the Navy's official release of three notorious UFO videos. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a33413777/pentagon-ufo-program-materials-vehicles/

New Haven down through SW CT into NJ has been wet. We have a cabin on a lake in NW NJ and its been like a rainforest there.