Elonka wrote:

Power remains out for many in the western parts of the metro area, especially west St. Louis county and St. Charles county.

Slept at my office last night. The power stayed on here, and it wasn't too bad. Felt sort of like being back in a military barracks, where everybody kind of had their own rooms, but you had to walk down the hall to go to the bathroom. I couldn't find anyone to play "Settlers of Catan", but we watched a movie and played some Skip-Bo.

The weather here is better than expected today. The "freezing line" that was approaching from Oklahoma, stalled about 5 miles west of the city. So everyone west of the line (around Troy, Missouri) froze last night. Those to the east, stayed above freezing. It was pouring rain for much of the night, which had the advantage of washing the ice off the trees -- they have sprung back up into "normal" shapes (minus a few branches). If the freezing line had been just a few miles east, things would be really bad right now. But as it is, the worst of the ice storms appear to be over, and now we just have to deal with plummeting temperatures -- expectations are that'll it drop another 30 degrees today, to "Arctic" levels.

One funny story about the sudden melting: Yesterday, one of my neighbors had put up a new birdfeeder on one of the iced-over trees, so that the birds would have something to eat. But then when the trees thawed, the branches raised up so much, that the feeder is now high in the tree, and my neighbor can't reach it anymore! So next time I see a birdfeeder way way way up in a tree, I'm going to wonder if it got placed while that tree was in an icier state. :)

As regards electricity: Power has been restored to a few homes, but about 80,000 are still without power, and the area is still under a state of emergency. The National Guard has been going from house to house, checking on people. Power in my own apartment appears to have been restored last night, but many other of my co-workers were not as lucky, and will again be sleeping in the office tonight (yes I've offered crash-space and access to hot showers).

Power outages by zip code:

Area Outages: 80,670


# of Customers
ZIP Out Served
62002 8 17618
62012 30 1701
62016 1 1476
62024 1 5420
62035 23 7443
62052 2 4849
62054 1 240
62092 1 1315
62206 4 7600
62220 1 10100
62226 1 14017
62254 6 2748
62288 1 1404
63005 1806 7995
63010 3 15698
63011 5099 16253
63012 2 4009
63014 43 259
63015 226 956
63016 3 3580
63017 3660 18872
63020 2 9708
63021 3705 23351
63023 6 2356
63025 492 5944
63026 131 19678
63031 405 21022
63033 162 19708
63034 75 7381
63037 589 1185
63038 889 2714
63039 63 552
63040 388 3366
63042 658 10771
63043 1762 11... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Acidus wrote:
Elonka is hardcore! At least you are making the best of it.

Heh, thanks.

As an update, things are slowly returning back to normal here. All of my co-workers' homes have services restored, though the utility company website is still showing about 10,000 homes without power. The weather outside is dry, but bitterly cold (around 10 degrees F, with wind chill).

Things at our office are slowly coming back up to normal speed. We still have blankets and pillows strewn around, plus there's a flu bug that's now working its way through the building, but other than that things are returning to routine.

Next on my "backlog" list is catching up with various internet projects, such as an ArbCom case at Wikipedia, and some Kryptos stuff.

Thanks to everyone that sent along well-wishes,

Elonka :)