A Day of Ice and Electricity

Today was like any other day. I got up, and was making breakfast in the kitchen listening to NPR while Liz was getting dressed/ready upstairs. And then, in the background, I heard something about the Metra Electric not running.

A few moments later, I saw on the Metra site that the Metra Electric line was shut down. The rain and ice storm that happened overnight had caused problems for the wires, and no trains were running. So out of nowhere: the closest thing I, as an adult, have to a snow day: an unexpected work from home day.

As Liz and I both realized we were going to have to work remotely, we began informing our respective workplaces. Sine I had a bit of time yet (it was closer to 8:15 when we found out)… I decided to throw on some shoes and walk to the nearby Starbucks for some coffee.

Hey – the trains might not have power, but I still need coffee to work.

The walk down the street was totally fine. A lot of things were encrusted with ice, but honestly… the sidewalks were a kind of slushy mess.

There were some slick spots, but most everything was melting – and there was a constant dripping of ice melting from nearly every tree I passed.

The sidewalks were totally fine. Having navigated to/from Starbucks, I was honestly surprised that Metra cancelled trains.

I guess though things were melting, there was still a film of ice over things. And I imagine that where the tracks are elevated (bridges and overpasses), it’s likely things were still frozen in those spots. So it made some bit of sense.

Another fun surprise to the day: mid-afternoon, the power just completely went out. While our laptops were still working, the home WiFi was not… and so we lost all ability to work for a while. Looking outside, I saw 4-5 ComEd guys on the utility pole in our backyard.

Turns out, they were the cause of the outage. Another line had popped off, and they shut off service to the block to re-attach it. A little sad they didn’t bring in another cherry picker, but it’s just as well… as they probably would have just left it in our backyard for a few weeks.

Related:
A Visit from ComEd at 3:00 AM
Selfies with the ComEd Cherry Picker
ComEd Returns for the Cherry Picker