Hurricane Irma

[Figgy1]

Was just talking about that with my barber today (who thankfully just had power restored).

I said I'd been through a few blizzards in Ohio growing up without power, huddled together in one room with a kerosene heater.

Still not sure, but leaning toward cold being worse.

You're so right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Jay & Sue]

When I was a kid growing up in Minneapolis I hated the 30 day stretches in the winter that did not get above 0 degrees. I'll take the heat any day!

 

[gawrshdanielle]

When I was a kid growing up in Minneapolis I hated the 30 day stretches in the winter that did not get above 0 degrees. I'll take the heat any day!

I live in central Minnesota and the last few nights have been unbearable. I think it was only 80 degrees too. So give me the colder weather. I also am a weird one where I only swim in Lake Superior so I think I'm just wired for chilly conditions.

 

[SSH]

I can't google a ton of links.. I can tell you as someone that was a long time resident of 3 counties in SoFla, they have always worked better than the lines themselves from everything I have seen.

Here's a quick article.. FPL has worked with many communities to do this.
http://palmbeachcivic.org/news/undergrounding/1536-local-communities-have-undergrounding-success

I keep wanting to end the subject, lol. If you're curious you can look up the various areas and what type of power outages they've faced in the past.. I'm sure it exists somewhere on the interwebs.

I wonder how the planned community of Weston fared compared to other cities. They got their power back during Wilma pretty quick and all their lines are underground. We lost power for 2 weeks during Wilma, but only 24 hours under Irma.

I'm so over hurricanes at this point. I was raised here - that's four plus decades in South Fla and a LOT of hurricane warnings and shifting cones over the years! I was here for all the big ones, including Andrew. I could write the how-to manual on hurricane prep!

I love this area for many reasons, but Irma really has me thinking of leaving. If I had family anywhere else, I'd be gone. But everyone I know is here. It's a tough call.

 

[SSH]

That is sad. They should have done better with getting some air circulating for those people. I think people have forgot how to survive without air conditioning. It was not even that hot that if they would have had them outside in the shade instead of cooped up they might have done better.

What a lot of people who "grew up without AC" don't necessarily realize, is that temps have been steadily climbing in the past three decades. Florida was always hot, but never like it's been the past 10 years. I've been here long enough to see a huge difference.

If you live inland, miles from the ocean and in a modern home not built to harness natural airflow and circulation, it's virtually inhabitable without some artificial cooling. Now if you're near the coast and have the sea breeze...it's sublime. I've sat in open air bars across from the beach in Aug/Sept with plenty of cool breezes and it felt wonderful. But that's not where most people live,work and commute day to day.

 

[Sonic Sunglasses]

I live in central Minnesota and the last few nights have been unbearable. I think it was only 80 degrees too. So give me the colder weather. I also am a weird one where I only swim in Lake Superior so I think I'm just wired for chilly conditions.

I live just north of Minneapolis, and have for 28 years. This is the last bloody one, thank goodness. Next spring it's back to Florida.

 

[DisAl]

They don't exactly explode. There is debris that shorts the high line to ground and you see the intense spark from that. It damages the transformer but usually there is no breach of the container just burn marks and time without power to the drop being fed from that transformer. Impressive to see.

As Joe Camel says, 99.9% of the time it is not a "transformer exploding" as the uneducated / misinformed news media so loves to say. It is usually either wind blowing the power line conductors together or the lines shorted by debris being blown into the lines. The transformers themselves are protected by fuses or other devices specifically to make sure that they DO NOT explode.

 

[wdwjmp239]

What is the gas situation in lee county right now? I am heading down there to my parents house tonight.

It's getting better! The lines went from an hour or so yesterday to about 30 minutes now. We're getting power back for sure. You should be fine!

 

[wdwjmp239]

"Ghostly shadow" doesn't mean much when you're cutting a tree off your pickup that just got squashed.

That must've been some ghost! Sorry about the pick-up.

 

[wdwjmp239]

From what I've last heard, 18% of Florida is still without power.

Florida Power & Light is kicking butt and taking names. Of course, they have help! They currently have the largest restoration workforce in the history of the company with over 20,000 linemen and women helping Florida get turned on again! We got power back Thursday morning, but they've been tooling around the neighborhood for the past two days. The last I saw them - they had four trucks deep in the woods off the Alico Road (Exit 128) Southbound I-75 on ramp. They were tearing down trees and putting up new lines - they were feeder lines that needed to be corrected to get the Exit 128 traffic lights working properly, a few businesses on Alico Road, and about 100 or so nearby homes. They're grinding away......

You can check the status here:https://www.fpl.com/storm/customer-outages.html

 

[wdwjmp239]

.....I could write the how-to manual on hurricane prep.....

Let me know when you want to write that manual. I've been here for Andrew, Wilma, Charley. I'm originally from Long Island, New York and we had our fair share of hurricanes up there. The one that sticks in memory was Hurricane Gloria in 1985.

 

[21stamps]

I wonder how the planned community of Weston fared compared to other cities. They got their power back during Wilma pretty quick and all their lines are underground. We lost power for 2 weeks during Wilma, but only 24 hours under Irma.

I'm so over hurricanes at this point. I was raised here - that's four plus decades in South Fla and a LOT of hurricane warnings and shifting cones over the years! I was here for all the big ones, including Andrew. I could write the how-to manual on hurricane prep!

I love this area for many reasons, but Irma really has me thinking of leaving. If I had family anywhere else, I'd be gone. But everyone I know is here. It's a tough call.

The joys of SoFla.. . You're in an amazing spot.. don't let a hurricane push you away!

What's crazy is, my friend without power and water is in Hiatus Isles, I would have thought they would have been back up earlier. The community is older though, the newer community, across the small lake from them, had power back after 2 days.

 

[MisterPenguin]

They don't exactly explode. There is debris that shorts the high line to ground and you see the intense spark from that. It damages the transformer but usually there is no breach of the container just burn marks and time without power to the drop being fed from that transformer. Impressive to see.

As Joe Camel says, 99.9% of the time it is not a "transformer exploding" as the uneducated / misinformed news media so loves to say. It is usually either wind blowing the power line conductors together or the lines shorted by debris being blown into the lines. The transformers themselves are protected by fuses or other devices specifically to make sure that they DO NOT explode.

Hate to break this to you, but they explode. The failure of the fuse to shut down an overload causes a huge heat buildup that ignites the mineral oil coolant in a sealed container. BOOM! The greenish light is the mineral oil burning in an explosive spray.

I lived in the heart of Superstorm Sandy. There was a transformer explosion glow within my line of sight about once every 30 minutes for over 10 hours. I had a keen interest in finding out what it was, it's cause, and what could be done to stop that chain failure of transformers.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a5337/4345791/

http://www.transproco.com/transformer-protector/why-transformers-explode/

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/what-happens-when-a-transformer-blows

 

[DisAl]

Hate to break this to you, but they explode. The failure of the fuse to shut down an overload causes a huge heat buildup that ignites the mineral oil coolant in a sealed container. BOOM! The greenish light is the mineral oil burning in an explosive spray.

I lived in the heart of Superstorm Sandy. There was a transformer explosion glow within my line of sight about once every 30 minutes for over 10 hours. I had a keen interest in finding out what it was, it's cause, and what could be done to stop that chain failure of transformers.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a5337/4345791/

http://www.transproco.com/transformer-protector/why-transformers-explode/

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/what-happens-when-a-transformer-blows

I have a degree in electrical engineering and 40 years experience with an electric utility. I have seen transformers explode and line faults of many different voltages.
What is your experience other than watching something too far a way to really know what was arcing?
I did not say they never explode. I said that 99.9% of the time what you are seeing is an arc generated by power lines coming in contact with each other or debris shorting out the line. And FYI, vaporizing aluminum can create a green glow too.
Transformer catastrophic failures are most often caused by an internal fault in the transformer itself when a winding to winding fault occurs.
It is highly likely that what you were seeing was lines being blown together by winds. I have also seen high voltage lines lying on the ground arcing, stop for a while, and then start arcing again. (That is why you should NEVER go near a downed power line. It may still be energized.) If what you were seeing had been a transformer you would most likely have seen a nice continuous fire to go along with it, not intermittent arcing. What I saw in the video clip that started this looks to me like a simple electrical arc caused by a line fault, not an explosion and fire.
I stand by my original statement. What the news and weather folks call "transformers blowing" or "transformers exploding" is most often not.
FYI, the picture at the top of the first link you posted is a line switch, not a transformer.

Sorry folks, I know I said I wasn't going to post on this thread again but I can't leave bad information unanswered.

 

[MisterPenguin]

I have a degree in electrical engineering and 40 years experience with an electric utility. I have seen transformers explode and line faults of many different voltages.
What is your experience other than watching something too far a way to really know what was arcing?
I did not say they never explode. I said that 99.9% of the time what you are seeing is an arc generated by power lines coming in contact with each other or debris shorting out the line. And FYI, vaporizing aluminum can create a green glow too.
Transformer catastrophic failures are most often caused by an internal fault in the transformer itself when a winding to winding fault occurs.
It is highly likely that what you were seeing was lines being blown together by winds. I have also seen high voltage lines lying on the ground arcing, stop for a while, and then start arcing again. (That is why you should NEVER go near a downed power line. It may still be energized.) If what you were seeing had been a transformer you would most likely have seen a nice continuous fire to go along with it, not intermittent arcing. What I saw in the video clip that started this looks to me like a simple electrical arc caused by a line fault, not an explosion and fire.
I stand by my original statement. What the news and weather folks call "transformers blowing" or "transformers exploding" is most often not.
FYI, the picture at the top of the first link you posted is a line switch, not a transformer.

Sorry folks, I know I said I wasn't going to post on this thread again but I can't leave bad information unanswered.

Sorry, I was surrounded by explosive booms. It was more than arcing.

https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/10/30/why-transformers-explode-during-storms/

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-makes-transformers-explode-101228674/

I'm getting multiple accounts from tech and science sites agreeing on one thing, and a person on a Disney site saying another. I don't doubt that a lot of arcing incidences are called transformer explosions. But it seems that exploding transformers during really big storms is also common.

 

[DisAl]

Sorry, I was surrounded by explosive booms. It was more than arcing.

https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/10/30/why-transformers-explode-during-storms/

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-makes-transformers-explode-101228674/

I'm getting multiple accounts from tech and science sites agreeing on one thing, and a person on a Disney site saying another. I don't doubt that a lot of arcing incidences are called transformer explosions. But it seems that exploding transformers during really big storms is also common.

Not nearly as common as you think. A large arc often does create a booming sound. Ever heard thunder?
A line fuse blowing sounds a lot like a shotgun blast. I have heard quite a few where the blowing fuse was well over a mile away.
Again, I am not saying that transformers never explode, I am just saying that most of the reporters you see on tv call every arc a "transformer blowing" when some of the video clearly shows that transformers are not involved at all. I also note that the report of "transformer exploding" in the video clip in your first link is described as such by the news media, not someone who knows what they are talking about. And if the transformer truly explodes, you will usually see an oil fire following the electrical arc. The explanation of transformer failures in the articles you link to are technically correct, they just don't apply to 99.9% of what the media reports.
Been there, done that. For 40 years.

 

[JohnD]

By the time these tropical "creatures" head up north, they are ghostly shadows of their former selves.

Right. Like people are concerned about José. It will kick up surf and bring in some Nor Easter winds and that is about it.

 

[larryz]

Right. Like people are concerned about José. It will kick up surf and bring in some Nor Easter winds and that is about it.

Right now, I'm more concerned about TD14 and Disturbance1, but I guess we'll be having 4,000 post threads on both of those before too long... .

 

[21stamps]

Still a long way to go, but this is positive news!!
The schools also have a tentative opening date of the last week of the month.

 

[JohnD]

Right now, I'm more concerned about TD14 and Disturbance1, but I guess we'll be having 4,000 post threads on both of those before too long... .

Would be a new thread if it came to it.