Winter Wonder Land

George Rebane

Like many folks in Nevada County last night, Jo Ann and I were listening to the limbs crashing down around our house wondering if the next one would come through the roof.  The wet snowfall – ‘Sierra cement’ – wreaked havoc across the foothills and turned out the lights for most of us in western county.  They are still out.  After the sun came up things didn’t get any better, but now we could see the damage and witness the crashing of more ‘widow makers’.

As friends Russ Steele and Bob Crabb report, others were not as fortunate as we (knocking on my noggin).  Both had damage to their houses from falling trees and limbs.

We and the neighbors played generator derby, turning them on and off to save fuel.  It seems that no one knows how long the power will be off.  The damage was so extensive and the outages so many that PG&E crews are swamped.  Calling their customer information number lets you play phone menu until you get to a recorded voice that assures us they are working as hard as they can, and the power will come on when it comes on.  Those who harbored thoughts that the PG&E crews were out there dawdling are, of course, heartened by such reports.

That kind of response was about all that KNCO has been able to put out.  Actually, they have had more information because people call in with outage, downed power lines, and blocked road news.  But PG&E isn’t more forthcoming with the mediat than they are with us.  When I called KNCO about the matter on the media line, I was told that PG&E is a lot less informative today than they were in days of yore when such storms ravaged the area.

My suggestion was for the media to ask PG&E to report how many people have had power restored since we know that about 23,000 accounts lost power.  This number they would surely be able to tell us, and that lets people at least come up with a guesstimate of progress and their own power restoration fortunes.  Again, I was told that PG&E wasn’t very forthcoming with that kind of information.  ‘We don’t know’ is their story, and they’re sticking to it – go suck eggs.

When all else fails, there is a bit of science that can be applied to this informational wasteland.  Some years back physicist Richard Gott came up with some complex reasoning about the termination of unknown processes.  I was able to reduce his arguments to a simple formula that you can apply in a few seconds with a calculator.  The question is ‘given an unkown but observable ongoing process that has been going on for a known period of time, what is the probability that it will terminate in the next interval of a given length?’

In our case the unknown process is PG&E’s repair efforts that will sooner or later include service to our house.  We want to know what is the ‘chance’ that power will be restored in, say, the next four hours.  As I write this, power has been out for about 20 hours at our house.  The formula for computing that power will come on some time during the next four hours is 4/(20 + 4) = 0.167 or one chance out of six.  More formally, if a process has been going on for time T, then  Prob(process ends during next t interval) = t/(T+t).  The complement T/(T+t) is, of course, the probability that it will end sometime after the next t interval.  So the chances that power will be restored to our house more than four hours from now is 5 out of 6 or 0.833.

This, dear reader, is the best that one can do with an absolutely minimal amount of information that is available about an ongoing process.  And this seems to be the exact amount that PG&E is willing to share with us.

Comments

[Mikey McD]

George, I take full responsibility for the storm(s). I stressed to our kiddos that they were getting soft and told them Sat am that I was going to put them through a 'boot camp' of sorts to toughen them up... BAM! the power went out- providing boot camp environment. We did not have the usual gourmet meals, warm showers, tv... I relished it (they did not, but, they are better for it).

I did contribute our beloved Walnut tree to mother nature.

http://mikeymcd.tumblr.com/tagged/Tree

[George Rebane]

The loss of mature trees is remarkable. Bob Crabb emailed that the oak tree he used to climb as a little "crablet" is now leaning on his roof.

Our power is still out as is Russ Steele's. However, the report this morning was that only 5,000 homes in Nevada County remain without power, so PG&E is making progress. But it is again clear that my neck of the woods seems to be in the hind tit department for repairs.

(For the younger reader, 'hind tit on a boar hog' is a traditional vulgar colloquialism for last last and/or useless. That being because the hindmost mammary is often the driest, and such an outlet when found on a male pig seals the point.)

[RL Crabb]

Ha ha! As I was about to start typing, the fire dept. showed up at my front door. Someone had called, thinking we were trapped in our house. It looks a lot worse than it is. No leakage in the house, and I blazed a trail through the limbs to get outside.

And it was a maple,George. The old dear was hollow, and a disaster waiting to happen. Fortunately, I had it severely pruned a few years ago, and that probably saved us from having the sucker in our living room.

[Dave C]

PG&E's "outage status" automated phone line is a joke. I was out of power from Saturday night until 130pm Monday. When calling in with my phone number as a reference, the message was "We are aware of the power outage in your area, crews are on site and working to restore power. The next up date will be at 120PM Sunday." Called back at about 3pm. Same message, followed by the next update will be at 6PM Sunday.

I live a couple of blocks down Banner LC from Russ. The whole area is a mess with downed trees and limbs. Two fair sized branches, maybe 6 inches diameter at the thickest part and 20 feet long fell in my backyard. No damage, but it sure woke me up.

Glad I have a 2.5KW generator to keep the essentials running and to provide some heat from the gas fireplace insert with heat-o-later blower.

[Mike Sherman]

Mickey McD....loved your post. The youth have not a clue, and nature is offering a classroom of experience in the real sense.

[Dixon Cruickshank]

just checking in - no problems here

[George Rebane]

Dixon, do I hear a Floridian crowing?

[Dixon Cruickshank]

not at all, just checking in is all - I guess that cold air will stay north of us late in the week too. Its been nice so far and that is a big blast so with it staying in GA that is a good thing, been about as good as it gets here 79/65 but it always is this time of year.

Except if I go camping for thanksgiving, but thats another story

got power yet??

[George Rebane]

No power as of 1530PST 23nov10. PG&E has a totally useless customer information line. They oscillate between predictions of when power is restored and then tell you they have no idea. This has been going on for three days now.

[Todd Juvinall]

No power and a broken pole on my street.