things here in central Illinois have improved, but we also were impacted by the big storm moving across the middle of the US a couple of days ago.
We got a lot of rain and freezing rain. Combined with high winds, there were tree branches breaking off and taking out the power lines, as well as whole trees toppling over due to the soil just being too saturated with rain to support the trees when impacted with 40mph winds.
As an indication of the situation, let me just offer this view of the nearby bike trail (multi-user path) when I ran errands on the bike yesterday...
The ice was pretty nasty on the overpasses too. I discovered that the bike lane on the nearby overpass was still covered with ice, although hidden by an inch of snow. The back end of the bike slid out as soon as I was on the ice, and I was barely able to stand up! Not coincidentally, there were two power poles knocked down by cars at the ends of the bridge.
![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
I suspect that the roads were warm enough to avoid ice build-up, and the drivers were taken by surprise when they hit that icy bridge.
Between the trees and the drivers, the metro area lost power to roughly a third of its households.. 41,000, according to the news. That was on Monday... I lost power at 9:30am. Power was restored at 7:30am on Tuesday. There are still some people waiting to have power restored.
Despite not being a full-fledged flashlight nerd, my assortment of flashlights and bicycle lights fulfilled my need for batteries and illumination. The Maglite XL100 was very useful... the ability to dim it to a very low level provided enough light to do routine tasks without drawing much power. Having a portable jump-start battery was good too... I was able to run my laptop via an inverter for a few hours.
I know that some folks in the audience wait for a chance to actually need their flashlights and stash of batteries, but it's a very good feeling to have power come back on and be able to cook food, take a warm shower, and heat the rooms! Thanks to the folks at the electric utility company for working hard in nasty weather and fixing the lines, poles, and transformers!