Decline of Industrial Civilization? Extreme heat + millions without power

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decline, electrical grid, industrial civilization, power outage

Extreme heat warnings were issued for 14 states on Sunday, complicating an already dangerous situation created by a massive weekend storm that killed at least 12 people and left more than 3 million without power in the mid-Atlantic.

via Extreme heat + millions without power = Dangerous situation | The Lookout – Yahoo! News.

 

Is this another indicator of the decline of industrial civilization? Weather is weather, it gets hot in the summer. Very hot here in Prescott, Az lately. So the heat is just noise. The signal, the important information here, is the poor robustness of the electrical power grid. Without reliable electricity, modern industrial society cannot exist. Yes, a negative thought for a hot July day.

Winter Storm: Blackout, White Snow

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power outage, prescott az, snow, winter storm

Our late winter storm came in as forecasted. We have significant snow on the ground. March lives up to its reputation as the snowiest month. I will be out taking photos later today.

We had a major power failure last night, 8:45 to a little after midnight. We always have flashlights close at hand: power fails, flashlights on. So we went to bed in the dark – that’s normal, right? When the power came back, the lights we left switched on came up and woke us.

From the Daily Courier:

All four feeders at the Arizona Public Service substation on Granite Street failed for unknown reasons at about 8:45 p.m. Saturday night, blacking out an unknown number of customers in downtown Prescott, APS spokesman Matt Meierbachtol said.

“We don’t know what happened,” he said. “We have troublemen at the substation investigating. We will restore power as soon as we can.”

A refreshingly honest spokesman.  I can tell you that the area around the high school was in total darkness.