just checking in, posting about the weather.. UPDATED w/pic

[DURHAM D]

7. Where I live we lose power during snow and ice storms

because we have too many tall trees and they are adjacent to overhead lines. When the branches get too much weight on them they fall off. This can then cause the tree to be out of balance and the whole tree falls over. When that happens they fall onto other trees knocking them down. All of this can end up falling onto and pulling down power lines. Some parts of the country bury as much of their city grid as possible but where I live was densely settled long before anyone was thinking about protecting the lines.

I am on the edge of a city with about 230K occupants. A few years ago I was standing outside after it had quit snowing and watched as five transformers blew up. It was some distance from me but in the quiet of the night I could hear the explosion and watch as it lit up the sky like fireworks in a semi-circle pattern around me. I think the multiple transformer thing was the result of one part of the grid going down and switching to and overloading another part of the grid and it causes a chain reaction.

It is hard for friends and family who live in the southwest and lower midwest to understand the problem because they just don't have that many trees.