Massive ice storm in MA - state of emergency declared!

I'm here just north of Albany and the place is in a Mess! Huge trees down everywhere, the power off for just about everyone south of me. Spent some of the day hooking up generators for friends. Just before lunch, it started getting colder and the wind picked up. The trees coming down were quite impressive. 5 foot oak busted right in two at the base. Scott

Wood'nCoal wrote:I was in West Boylston yesterday, stayed overnight in West Springfield, worked in Springfield today. I missed it all, just rain.

No ice in Stillwater? We missed it here at 650' but go up the hill another 200 and it looks just like the pictures Smitty and others have posted. It was pouring here and the temperature was hanging at 32.5 for hours. I just kept watching and waiting. Got lucky this time but for the folks up on the hills, it'll be a while till it's cleaned up.

My father lives in West Boylston Ma he just got power back a few minutes ago. He is 76 years old and told me he's NEVER seen anything THIS bad. My brother lives in Hubbardston Ma and is a volunteer fireman. He told me that yesterday none of them could get out of their own homes. He said nine poles were down on his street alone. Boy what a mess!

Last night at 11pm I cranked up the AA-130 and heated the house to 75deg before shutting down the generator for the night.
This morning it was 58 deg but the AA-130 was ready for some A/C power. After about 15mins the house was comfy again.
Thought I'd show some pics of the gen set-up 13.5kw (very sweeet). Most people don't really care about this kind of stuff. This forum seems to harbor alot of mechanically minded people who understand me.

Holy cow, after seeing some of the pics here and seeing some of the news reports from different areas I feel lucky. Hope nobody suffered to much damage.

Jeff

mr1precision wrote:........Thought I'd show some pics of the gen set-up 13.5kw (very sweeet). Most people don't really care about this kind of stuff...........

I love stuff like that! That's is MINT! Not much to a generator when you take the engine away from it. I always wondered if I could rig one of those up to an axle on my truck in a pinch..

Those tractors are worth their weight in gold -- you can get pretty much anything done around the house. Hopefully by the time I retire I'll be able to afford one!



I took a ride to fill my gas grill tanks today & there are still wires & trees all over the road. Then as you go down in elevation.........NOTHING! Just like VigIIPeaBurner said , higher elevations got hammered, lower got rain & that's it. Typical New England weather!

Still waiting for power. My generator that I bought damaged, but new, from Cummins Tool has been cranking away non-stop for 2 days! I think it's earned it's $300 purchase price! Someone dropped it out of a trailer truck & it broke the generator mounts right out of the housing & the gas tank was bashed in -- all the way in! All I did was stick a rubber exhaust hanger under the rotor housing sideways, then, held my hand over the gas tank opening & blasted it up with compressed air. I think I ended up getting a couple extra gallon capacity!

VigIIPeaBurner wrote:

Wood'nCoal wrote:I was in West Boylston yesterday, stayed overnight in West Springfield, worked in Springfield today. I missed it all, just rain.

No ice in Stillwater? We missed it here at 650' but go up the hill another 200 and it looks just like the pictures Smitty and others have posted.

Nope, just rain here. Yesterday when I was on 284 through Wantage you could see the mountains over in Vernon, all the trees on the tops were iced up. Highland Lakes area had a lot of damage.

I feel sorry for all of those suffering without power.

This is what we saw up in Freddy's neck of the woods last spring.

The pic is from the top of I think Mt. Kineo, ME. This is actually a pine tree.





Rick

Here in Leominster, we got lucky most of the city had power back by 5:00 Am this morning. I lost one tree in the front of the house, but thats OK cuz didn't likethe tree anyway, it was infested with carpenter ants. Had to shut the coal boiler down once the water temp got to 220*,no power - no circulators. Had my generator hooked up to my house and a nieghbor on each side of me so we took 2 hour shifts to keep heat up in all three houses. Had to use the oil boiler ( aaaarrrrrgh ).

Smitty, looks like you live on one beautiful piece of property.

Well, coal boiler fired back up now so all is peacful again.

Drove up to Winchendon today to wire up coal furnace for a friend, they had 2 inches of snow an a lot of ice. no power there by the time i left this afternoon.

Route 2 felt like driving thru an ice tunnel ice everywhere. Could see high tension line down just south of the road.

Your trees needed pruning.. Mother Nature 'helped' you out !

EVERYONE PLEASE be carefull.. The exhaust from a gas generator killed some of my friends [whole family].. and the garage door was open, the generator outside the garage.. but the wind and draft on the house pulled the CO into the house..

Be safe..

Greg L

Mr1Precision...what a sweet machine! I have a tiny (14 HP) Kubota, I wonder if they make a generator for it.

Greg, so sorry to hear of the deaths from CO.

Freddy,
Check out Northern hydraulics. Thats what they used to be anyway. Not cheap but boy it's nice. The best part is that you never have to worry about the fuel going bad. For the most part generators sit around for months on end. Then when you need it the carb is messed up. This one's been in my garage for 8 years waiting for just such an occasion.

Well, its Sunday night and still no power. Maybe we'll get lucky and get power back in the next couple of days.

Wonder how Smitty's doing????

Another day no municipal power yet. Anyone else?

Freddy ~ If you have a power take off on your tractor you might well be in luck.if I can remember correctly rule of thumb is 2 h.p./k.w. That puts you in a good output range for a wide variety of load. If you have a diesel engine in your tractor,so much the better. Diesel engines seem to excell at long steady runs while under load. We can't have too much hardware around to support our boilers and furnaces and thats for certain! Regards, Mike

They just turned mine on last night but their is still a lot of people in Ashburnham and throuout MA, NH and VT without power including my brother who lives about 3 miles from me. North central Massachusetts got whaled pretty hard.

Everyone get ready again!! NWS just issued winter storm watch for most of NY and NEPA. Our local is calling for accumulations of 7" or more in many locations and the possibility of a foot or more in some locations. Don't put your generators away yet. Watch is in effect locally from late Thurs. night until friday evening. Also looks like we may get another one Sun into Mon. I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, just wanted everyone to have a heads up.

Jeff