I noticed earlier that the people on the street behind us had lost their power by all the types of lighting they were using or better said (Not using) so I knew as of about 10 pm tonight with constant 35 mph winds with gusts up to 50 miles per hour that one or more trees had come down and knocked down a power line somewhere near us likely by 12:30 AM.
My daughter and her boyfriend were still awake by 12:30AM so they woke me up. It was nice having help do all the things that needed to be done because they are 29 and 31 and I am 77 and the arthritis in my thunbs prevents me from doing easily a lot of things I used to do without a lot of pain. Luckily my fingers are okay probably because I have been playing piano and keyboards and organs including pipe organs in my teens.
The winds outside sounded pretty scary that might have been a 75 mph gust that could bring down more trees as of right now. It feels warm sort of like Hawaii out too and there are pine needles everywhere and all sorts of things out of trees and off of roofs are everywhere too.
I normally wouldn't have started the generator late at night but we have a total of 8 people here for Christmas and there is a lot of food in two refrigerators that I need to save for Christmas Eve and Day for the family.
What was nice was my daughter 29 woke me up to tell me the power was out and she and her boyfriend did most of the harder work. This allowed me to make sure all the details of everything were in order like making sure one of the 8 of us wasn't going to trip on electric cords in the kitchen or electric cord going down to the garage for the 2nd back up refrigerator there for when this many people are visiting at once. We bought it about 5 years ago when I think there were about 10 of us visiting then and we rented a hotel room for my son from Portland and his family then because we only have 3 bedrooms here but we also have 3 bathrooms and a really large living room and kitchen and foyer area. So, this many people are going to feel okay here because the house is large enough to make everyone relatively happy. We have owned this house since 1999 near the coast in the SF bay area. Actually 1 mile about from the ocean.
Also, I got the WIFI running and one lamp in the kitchen too and I got my daughter and her boyfriend to get up at around 6 or so to shut the generator off and refill the gas tank and restart it.
So, so far everything is good even with all the main power off.
Also, if your power goes off anywhere in California or wherever you are don't try to use wall outlets to carry your electricity because when the power comes on it will destroy your gas or diesel generator. So, just use outdoor cords I find is best they are usually orange or yellow usually and I try to keep at least one 100 foot cord available and one or two 50 foot cords for backups in emergencies too but don't ever run your generator power through your wall sockets because this could start a fire or blow up your Gas or diesel Generator when the power comes back on.
This way when the power comes back on from in our Case P, G and E in California you see the lights come on first but you are okay. So, if your power stays on from the utility you can first go out and shut off your generator and then unplug everything from cords to the generator and then plug everything into wall sockets instead of cords connected to the generator. This works good and I have done this usually at least once a year for a lot of years so far where we live.
We made sure we have a natural Gas Stove top that can be lit with a match for times like this too. So, even though you can't cook in an oven you can cook on the stove top and microwave things too because the microwave doesn't take much power.
But, the things you can not do are run electric heaters or any 220 or electric stoves or things like that. So, for example, I cannot heat up my hot tub either because that is 220 too. So, I'm not sure hot water will work either without electricity even though I'm pretty sure we have a gas hot water heater still where we live. It's hard to keep track of what is going to work and what won't when these things only happen usually once or twice between about December and March or April when you get 75 to 100 mph winds off the ocean usually from the southwest from Hawaii or from the North down from Alaska or something like this.
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