Spring storms bring power outages, again !

It's almost spring.

The power went out about 9:55p on Wednesday March 19, 2025.  It stayed off until sometime before 9:10a on Thursday.  There was a storm with heavy wet snow and wind which is never a good combo for trees, especially evergreens.

normally the top two wires would be warm enough to shed the snow, the bottom wire is the fiber for internet

So the first major outage of 2025, there was another on March 5th but that only lasted a couple of hours.

This time other areas of the island weren't affected.

Instead of suffering without a hot beverage this morning I remembered that stash of MRE meal warmers.  They can also be used for heating liquids.  They are similar to those hand warmers based on powdered iron and some other chemicals only the MRE heaters have been supercharged ?

I dug one out by flashlight and tried it, results were very disappointing.  There are multiple warnings in the directions that the heater becomes very hot but nope - it wouldn't even have made a good hand warmer.  I guess this is to be expected from something over 14 years old.

The problem might be the thin green plastic bag that the warmer is packaged in.  Although it is sealed that doesn't mean that it it moisture proof.  For something approaching a hermetic seal the packaging must be ceramic, glass or metal.  For the MRE entrees the plastic bags are very heavy/tough and have a thin layer of metal.

if I'm reading that 4 digit code correctly the heaters are from the 230th day of 2010

Oh well, I now have a source for tall skinny zip beverage bags that can be repurposed for something else !  And I wasn't really that comfortable in releasing hydrogen gas into the house if the MRE heaters had been working.

Update: 3-20-2025 evening: there was another power outage here at 6:30p for a little over an hour.  This is messing up my maple syrup production !

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm