Record Snowfall in Ottawa

[Doug_G]

Not immune from immersion. I had to cross a puddle that was about 100 feet in extent but only 2-3 inches deep. I took it slow but I'm sure there was a lot of water flying around under the car. The pack may have briefly interpreted that as immersion.

In other news, having the power lines short out about 30 feet from our feed transformers resulted in some serious havoc with our office servers and systems. Surge protectors and UPS weren't enough to protect against what came down the power line. We only lost a few pieces of hardware, but an amazing number of things had to be fully power cycled to get them back up.

This has suddenly changed from a wimpy El Nino winter into something that is seriously messing with us.

 

[mknox]

In other news, having the power lines short out about 30 feet from our feed transformers resulted in some serious havoc with our office servers and systems. Surge protectors and UPS weren't enough to protect against what came down the power line. We only lost a few pieces of hardware, but an amazing number of things had to be fully power cycled to get them back up.

Utilities often use auto reclosers instead of fuses on the lines to deal with transient faults like animal contacts or tree branches. After a few second delay, the recloser will restore power and only if it re-trips two or more times will it stay in the open position. It sounds like what you saw re-closed and stayed in making that roadway scene very dangerous.

 

[Doug_G]

Yes, it was clear that our three phase power was fully restored, so there was a very good chance that the wire lying across the road was energized. That's why I called 911 and stayed there until the fire services arrived. The oncoming car I barely managed to get to stop almost contacted the draping wire. I was very worried at first that he'd do something dumb like get out of the car, but after a minute he backed away and parked.

The fireman looked a lot more concerned when I told him our lights went out but came back up again. Obviously they are well trained.