Bountiful Wind Storm

There were record wind speeds a week after Thanksgiving (95 mph in Bountiful!). The windstorm made national news! KSL article. We were without power for 44 hours. It was amazing how much we rely on electricity! Good thing I had a smart phone or else I would have felt REALLY cut off. Our heater uses gas, but the blower uses electricity. So we didn't have heat and our house quickly dropped to about 55 degrees that first night. Pete got the kitchen fire going and we had it up to about 67 by the time we went to bed. I went to my parents the next day and slept over my sister-in-laws house that night. My mom was on her stake emergency preparedness committee and gives us emergency prepardness items for christmas. We did pull out the 1,000 hour candle and the solar powered emergency radio.

The power came back on and we were SO glad to be back at home. But it didn't stop there. Our street alone lost 16 50-year-old trees. Pete was out all day Saturday and even Sunday cleaning up fallen trees and branches. They canceled church so that there would be more time for cleanup before another possible storm. Deseret article on the Sunday clean-up.

So did we get any damage? Yes, our 25ft flag pole that was staked in the ground by 36 strands of christmas lights snapped in half. You can see in the picture that the deer and santa look like a war zone. We tried to salvage what we could, but the ground was already frozen and we couldn't stake anything new into the ground. It was sad because there were a lot of people showing up to our house for a show. It will be up and going next year!!

I think what I learned from the wind storm and power outage how quickly circumstances can change with a disaster (this was a small one). We did go out and buy a generator prior to the second storm because we didn't want to have to leave our house again. We still had gas and running water, so we'll have to think through our recovery strategy for both of those!