Pretty
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Cool, I saw one once too, took a photo also. It was over the St Clair Riverā¦ One is very hard to see but the other one was cool as you could see where it started.
The land you see in the first picture is Russell Island. It marks the divide between the North and South channels of the St Clair river. A very mighty river indeed. This is the North channel. The south channel is deeper and the freighters use only the South. The photos were taken from the Mainland. Algonac MI
The current is 4 knots and the water is fed into the river from Lake Huron. Photos were taken 08-14-2012.
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Interesting in both photos of a double rainbow the sky is brighter under the rainbow. Quite dark between them too.
We had a major electric āeventā this morning. 9 transformers blew and thousands of people are without power. They say power should be restored around 11 a.m. At least itās much warmer today. First time above zero in days
Simultaneously?
Apparently, yes
It involves two utility companies as well
Strange.I am not an expert on power,.but it is a common sense that there is current protection circuit build in. Blew at a same timeļ¼ I couldnāt think of other reasons, but a higher temperatures rated (narrower temperature range) component might be used without knowing?
No idea. My guess is lack of appropriate investment in maintenance. Not a lot gets invested in greater MN, most of the money gets spent on the 7 county Twin Cities metro.
Agree very likely the case. Itās sad
Stuff fails sometimes whether you maintain it or not. What seemed to happen simultaneously to us was probably a very very quick progressive event. Something failed due to cold/snow/moisture and probably overloaded the switch designed to catch an event such as this. The progressive failure caused others down the line. Thankfully it didnāt go any further than what it did.
As a young guy I interned for Virginia Power one summer. After work one evening as I watched TV with my folks, the power to the house blinked. It wasnāt the real quick blink you sometimes see, but a rather long one of a few seconds. I thought to myself that this couldnāt be good and I was right. The next day my supervisor took me to one of those large transformer substations. One of ceramic insulators actually blew up - but this one had about 8-10 of those inverted bowl type insulators placed in series and almost all of them disintegrated. THere were ceramic shards all over the transformer station yard. After this event, the backup switch failed, but thankfully the third level device held, but the event apparently blinked half the East Coast.
The amount of electricity transferred around is incredible.
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Does cold weather blow transformers, or is the the snow, or is it the extra demand placed on them because people are using more electricity?
Do you have NG and heat again?
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Actual transformer part very unlikely will be affected by the cold for it is immersed in cooling oil.
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Now that Hell (MI) has frozen over, you have permission to do many things ā¦
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Probably extra demand mixed with extreme cold? Not sure. Iāve never had (knock on wood) power loss in winter here. Very common with summer tstormsā¦
Single digits felt mild this morning by comparison. Should be 20F today.
During that cold -31F night my garage dropped to 1F. I opened the door for an hour during the afternoon and it quickly dropped to -4F (outside temp in neg teens)ā¦so key is to keep it closed up.
Roads were terrible this morning. Very slickā¦lots of accidents. Witnessed a full size chevy pickup do figure 8ās down the interstate and crash into a big snow pile. Got lucky but i doubt he was getting out of that without a tow truck (i was going opposite direction).
Did the pickup have MN plates? I swear Twin Cities drivers are the worst
Funny you say that because yes it didā¦it was heading eastbound just coming out of MNā¦ That stretch was just slick as ice and you really couldnāt tell. Probably just started sliding and corrected to much and that was thatā¦sometimes its best to just let off the gasā¦and be very gentle with the steering.
The lakes are all frozen solid hereā¦should probably take the van out there and do some figure 8s of my own.
I saw a dude once in a ford ranger going about 100mph across the lakeā¦iām like what a fool. There are huge pressure ridges that formā¦you hit one of those babies and you are catching some air.
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It seems that a great number of folks from the great state of MN are really crappy drivers 
It also seems that a lot of the accidents/vehicles in the ditch I see are nice, new 4 wheel drive pickups. People think 4WD is a cure allā¦all 4WD does for you on ice is make sure all 4 wheels are slipping
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a few years back a sledder was flying across a local lake and hit a 4ft. pressure ridge. killed him instantly! he was from CT.