Storm the Field

Even video game websites are dunking on Trump:

$17B deal. The list of mid-major E&P's in existence grows even shorter.

Ended up losing power at my house from about 2:30 to 7:30. Wife was freaking out b/c she was reading anywhere from 24-48 hours from people posting on the Ring app. Sounds like there are a couple pockets of GOOF that are still without power this morning. Got some trees down in an easement and had to wait until sunlight to get a vegetation crew out this morning. This is just way too fucking soon after the last round. A good chunk of our neighborhood lost power for 4 or 5 days after the derecho. Less than a week after getting resotred it happened again.

315K currently without power in the Houston area. We made it a whopping 5 days between power outages. Today's affair should be fixed up much quicker, but man, Summer 2024 is already starting to wear out its welcome, and it's still several weeks away from starting.

Got some legit street flooding here near my office by Washington HEB. Co-worker says that the Yale underpass is currently impassable with a couple feet of water.

No rain inside the loop yet, but it's nearly completely pitch black outside my office window. I've never seen it this dark at 1:30 in the afternoon in my life.

Ahh, it's going to be one of THOSE Summers. Extended searing heat and humidity punctuated by quick-moving, violent storms and the occasional tornado. Roofers, Fence Guys, Electricians:

Damn. Glad I'm gonna be down at the beach for Memorial Day weekend. High of 85 each day through Sunday and there's always a nice steady sea breeze. Gonna be 95+ in town Friday-Monday before we get back down to more normal temps and get some rain chances next week.

After 138 hours, my street finally has power. Neighbor just texted that we're back in business as of about 20 minutes ago and confirmed that my front porch light is on.

Check your PM.

115K as of the 5:30 update. Sure hope they can do better than 30K tomorrow. Or at least include me in tomorrow's 30K. Just saw that a bunch of the blocks in my neighborhood that got power back yesterday had it turned off again a couple hours ago. Apparently planned and supposed to be back on by 8 pm, but man I'd be livid. People freaking out about how they stocked up on groceries earlier, houses were just starting to cool down...

Getting down to the grinding, block-by-block restoration work now. When I first checked outage tracker this morning, they were showing 145K customers still without power. 5 hours later, that's down to 135K.

We have a guy from Costco coming out to quote us on a Generac tomorrow. Fortunately have the backyard space necessary to install a decent size one and hook up to gas line. Never, ever, ever dealing with this again.

110 hours without power now. Looks like I'll be in the "lucky" 10% that still won't have power back tonight. My neighborhood is shaded "estimated restoration 5/22" on the current outage map. Re-booked our room for one more night tonight. Wife and I stopped by the house to empty out our fridge and freezer and re-pack our bags. 82 downstairs, 85 upstairs. Glad we didn't wait any longer as the fridge was already starting to smell borderline putrid. Got it emptied out, Clorox'd, and stuck some fresh baking soda boxes in. My wife loved to complain about having too many sauces and condiments filling up the fridge. Welp, she got her wish!

Still in the dark in my pocket of 77018. Approaching 90 hours without power. Possible, but not likely we get restored at some point this evening. Tomorrow seems more realistic. House stayed below 75 on Friday night so no big problem. We toughed it out on Saturday night though had to sleep downstairs on the couches and it was pretty miserable. Finally tapped out yesterday after it was getting close to 80 degrees indoors and cashed in some hotel points to get a room a Residence Inn that allows pets. Already re-booked for tonight. Luckily the kennel where we take our dogs re-opened today so we were able to drop them off while we both go to work today. This sucks. Longest I've ever been without power. I'd say the freeze/Harvey/Ike were "worse" insofar as the extent of damage caused and the extent of disruption to daily life in Houston. At least we've had running water the whole time, grocery stores have been open, and it hasn't been too hard to find restaurants and bars open. But I never lost power for more than 72 hours in any of those. Possible I'll end up going 120+ in this one when it's all said and done.

605K as of 10 minutes ago. Slow and steady progress.

Markets closed. It's official.

Travis Herzog, ABC13

As of 2 hours ago, this was showing 684K people without power in Houston. As of latest update 15 minutes ago, down to 651K. https://poweroutage.us/area/county/1394 I imagine a lot of people will get power back at some point today, but for several hundred thousand in the hardest hit areas, who the hell knows?

Yeesh. Timerbgrove always seems to get the worst of it. So many houses had to be gutted after Harvey. Always seems to lose power for extended periods of time.

Man, I love older neighborhoods with mature trees as much as anyone, but storms like yesterday are an ass kicker for places like that. Just drove by my old house near 30th and Yale and it's a warzone. Oak trees split in half, branches through roofs, fences toppled over. It's a night and day difference from my current street less than a mile away. We've got some small limbs down and whatnot, but pretty much just looks like what you'd see after a bad storm.

Man, some companies are so tone deaf. Talked to a good friend of mine that lives in Timbergrove. He's out helping neighbors cut up trees, removing busted up fences and shit. Gets an email from his office at like 8:00 a.m. this morning. "Feel free to work from home today due to yesterday's weather." Said it was everything he could do to not respond "Feel free to kiss my fucking ass."

Space City has a good explainer of yesterday's disaster. https://spacecityweather.com/houston-what-the-heck-happened-on-thursday/

Welp, that was certainly an experience. I was hoping to get in the stadium before some heavy rain started, not a fucking tornadocane or whatever the hell that was last night. Met up with friends at a brewery by the stadium at around 6:15. We were planning to grab maybe 2-3 rounds of beers before walking over, thinking rain wouldn't start until after we got inside. Whoops. Still made it to the game though!

Same boat. I met some buddies at Frost Town brewery before the game. Got there about 6:15 and it wasn't even raining yet. Forecast was making it look like storms wouldn't arrive until after first pitch. Drank 1 beer, went and got another and I look up and it's pitch black outside, raining sideways, and everyone's phone is flashing tornado warnings. Power went out for about 30 seconds but mercifully came back on. 15 minutes later the sun was back out. 2 of the guys GTFO to go check on their houses. Their neighbors were sending pics of trees on roofs and whatnot. Me and my other buddy knew our houses were fine from talking to our neighbors, but had no power. We said fuck it, rather be at MMP with power than at home in the dark so we walked over to the stadium and caught a ballgame. Getting home was a bitch though. We walked back to the brewery to wait for post-game crowd to thin out and it took forever to finally get an Uber signal. Luckily my buddy finally got one on the hook and added me as a stop. We were driving home in pitch black, taking detours due to downed trees and shit. Never been more grateful to make it to my house. My poor wife got stuck at a Total Wine on the way home from work for like 30 minutes. She popped in to the one by her office to grab a bottle of wine and get home before the rain, thinking she had time. Power went out, tornado warnings. Staff made everyone go hide in the bathrooms. Luckily, my boss came up to our office this morning and confirmed we have power and internet and everything, so I just rolled in. Drove down Heights Blvd to get here. It's completely fucked. Probably 50% of the trees on the trail are ripped apart. Gonna be several days until it's fully functional again and several years until it looks normal.