Our turn...

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jharkin

jharkin

Minister of Fire
Oct 21, 2009
3,890
Holliston, MA USA
So we got out of the big snowmageddon with nothing but a dusting... and then our turn came. Not a lot of snow, but definitely more than the 2 inches they where thinking as of wednesday. And it was the heavy wet stuff.

It froze hard last night and branches are down everywhere, 1/3 of my town has been without power since lunchtime yesterday due to a main line going down. Main road through town is still blocked now while they repair it.

I went out yesterday and used the 20ft pole from the roof rake to knock the snow off as many low branches as I could on our ornamental trees and the large pine out back - good thing too as we still lost a couple big ones. The crash when a 20 ft branch came falling 50ft down off the pine 15 ft from me was a scare I wont forget for a while!
 

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Punch # 2 on it's way.

Not that different from last year.

February.
 
We got 10 inches of slushy mush that came out of the chute on my snowblower like water out of a firehose - just without the pressure.
Got enough snow blowing done before It broke a shear pin. and then something happened with the throttle linkage when I shut it off to check.
Haven't gotten to it yet.

Got about half a cord of oak to cut up from branches down - some I couldn't move by hand. Luckily I have forks on the tractor. There's still small pockets of power out on the Cape and around Boston.
https://www.eversource.com/nstar/outage/outagemap.aspx
 
South shore MA just got upgraded to a blizzard warming tomorrow. Prediction for my area got bumped from 4 to 12 since breakfast.


Here we go.
 
Oh oh, sounds like there's going to be a long complaining call from the SIL tomorrow.
 
MA and CT can't seem to figure out how to trim trees around power lines. Other (much larger) states like NY, don't have this problem on a regular basis. When I lived in CT, power was always a concern. Here we can get 4 feet and a big ice storm before there is any issue.

Gotta cut the trees.
 
billb3 said:
We got 10 inches of slushy mush that came out of the chute on my snowblower like water out of a firehose - just without the pressure.
Got enough snow blowing done before It broke a shear pin.
Click to expand...
We got hit pretty good with the first one (22-24") and this last one which was supposed to 1-3 but became 11" with a heavy slushy base. Resorted to tipping the snow blower back and skimming off the top. Thankfully I was able to scrap away the 1" layer I had to leave with a shovel and the residual melted off. Did manage to find the neighbors newspaper w/o breaking a shear pin. The paper was not so lucky.
 
Dunno about western Ma but around here the biggest road block to tree trimming are communities not allowing trimming of trees from public roadways and right of ways beyond so many inches of the lines requiring constant trimming and inability to affect the limbing that actually should be done to minimize weather damage to lines.
 
billb3 said:
Dunno about western Ma but around here the biggest road block to tree trimming are communities not allowing trimming of trees from public roadways and right of ways beyond so many inches of the lines requiring constant trimming and inability to affect the limbing that actually should be done to minimize weather damage to lines.
Click to expand...
I think you are 100% right. People don't want the pretty 200yr old maple trimmed that will come crashing down during an ice storm, kill their family, and knock out power.
City folk. :)
 
sportbikerider78 said:
I think you are 100% right. People don't want the pretty 200yr old maple trimmed that will come crashing down during an ice storm, kill their family, and knock out power.
City folk. :)
Click to expand...
suburbs and rural - million dollar homes - where farms used to be - high property values on shaded country lanes
 
sportbikerider78 said:
MA and CT can't seem to figure out how to trim trees around power lines. Other (much larger) states like NY, don't have this problem on a regular basis. When I lived in CT, power was always a concern. Here we can get 4 feet and a big ice storm before there is any issue.

Gotta cut the trees.
Click to expand...

It depends on the area. Its very rare for me to loose power, but I am also near the center of town where there are less trees around the lines. The 2 day outage half of my town had Friday was an anomoly as a main feeder line was knocked out.

What I have noticed is that Eversource (ex-NStar) is very good about trimming, but the areas serviced by National Grid seem to have more systematic outages. Especially the south shore around Plymouth and Cape Cod where they get a lot of Ocean effect problems.

sportbikerider78 said:
I think you are 100% right. People don't want the pretty 200yr old maple trimmed that will come crashing down during an ice storm, kill their family, and knock out power.
City folk. :)
Click to expand...


You have to strike a balance, the trees provide a lot of useful shading, privacy, environmental benefits and animal habitat. If I had to live in one of those treeless subdivisions where I look out my windows and can see right into my neighbors living room I'd rather go get hit by a bus and be put out of my misery.



Yuck :(
6942706.jpg
 
All lines go underground in England.........it was and still is a little strange to see so many poles over here.

bob
 
jharkin said:
You have to strike a balance, the trees provide a lot of useful shading, privacy, environmental benefits and animal habitat. If I had to live in one of those treeless subdivisions where I look out my windows and can see right into my neighbors living room I'd rather go get hit by a bus and be put out of my misery.
Click to expand...

+1. Couldn't have said it better.
 
sportbikerider78 said:
IMHO, the option should be to bury the lines, not take out the trees. But it is possible that would kill the trees as well.
Click to expand...

I would love to have the lines be buried! Much safer and better for the look of the neighborhood.

Its easy and often done in new construction now... But extraordinarily expensive and disruptive to do in old neighborhoods that have been wired aerially since the 1920s or earlier. As it is my entire town just got hit with a $300 a year per family surcharge that's expected to last for 20 years to pay for replacing all our existing water mains (since short sighted voters have put it off for decades to the point the entire system now needs to be dug up and replaced wholesale). I cant imagine how expensive it would be to have all the wires buried as well.
 
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