This is just a short little update to tell you what has been going on for the past two weeks. It has been pretty bizarre in my area. Last week, very gusty winds plowed through the area. It was caused by a warm front that temporarily raised temperatures. What we didn’t know was the worst that Winter Storm Atticus was hitting the midwest and going straight into Canada. Below the jet stream was over the weekend, there was a tornado outbreak in the same area that led to numerous fatalities.
High winds are not terribly uncommon in the area since Erie is situated within the Great Lakes and Snowbelt. Weather projections stated that widespread power outages were expected. We were really worried we would get hit and possibly lose production time. As of now, the Prophet has to get everything done back to back before Drillimation is expected to let everyone out for Christmas break, which is expected to take place from December 17 – 28.
We perfectly survived the first week of winds in the area, more than 1,800 customers in the area reported outages. We had to get all of the graphical assets done for the third stage back-to-back before the storm came. The second week was even worse. More than 20,000 people lost electricity. Drillimation was hit too, but only for a split-second. The backup generators used to power the Prophet’s gaming workstation and internet router kicked in immediately. Others were simply unlucky; the electricity would never come back on, leading to evacuations. If you clicked on any outage in the area, every single outage’s estimated restoration time said that severe weather was causing power outages with no estimated restoration time.
According to FirstEnergy, the local utility company that serves the area, power is not expected to be restored until 4:00 PM EST on Monday, December 13, 2021. This would be really troublesome if you live in Erie County, PA, and own an electric vehicle, partly because there would be hardly any place to charge your vehicle or even get any gas, as all gas stations would be closed due to lack of electricity.
The aftermath was pretty hellish. Not only were power lines downed, trees were also uprooted and property was damaged. A lot of people were suffering because of the crisis. I had not seen anything like this in my entire life. Once power is restored, things will slowly return to normal, despite the coronavirus pandemic in its active levels as viruses prefer to survive in cold temperatures.
Drillimation Systems 