A tale of three Tweets: the power company providing electricity to the Super Dome very proud of the job they did (bottom); the power company blaming the Super Dome and/or the NFL (middle); and oh, maybe we should stop trying to place blame and fix this fucking problem instead (top).
Everyone knows that Ray Lewis sacked that transformer in an effort to extend his career.
The reaction on the Lower East Side when power came back on.Via @thecultureofme
Based on the way Twitter reacted to the power returning, you got the feeling that this was happening all over NYC today. Glad to see this.
Let’s be honest with ourselves, residents of DC: We’re kind of jerks to one another when the power’s out in our homes and we have to go to coffee shops just to charge our laptops and cell phones. (It’s understandable, just sort of weirdly cutthroat.) I’ve personally seen this dynamic at half a dozen places today, including a Barnes & Noble full of people laying on the floor trying to keep their laptops charged while their power was out. It doesn’t have to be like this though. Want to make friends today? Bring a power strip with you to Panera. (photo by edkohler) — Ernie @ SFB
We wrote this a few months ago due to another power outage, but this seems pretty relevant today — especially for those in NYC trying to latch onto some form of wifi.
» A big country that’s hard to keep wired: Even before the power outage that turned off the lights off in half of India, the country had power and capacity problems, leading Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to push for $400 billion in capacity improvements over the next five years. Another issue at play? High demand. The way that states pay for electricity in India is that they buy energy a day before, and are penalized if they use more than allotted — and some of the states affected by the power outages had excessive draw downs, which led to the power outages.
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» That’s half the country: Another huge chunk of India’s 1.2 billion people are working without power today after grids in more than a dozen states broke down. ”This is the second day that something like this has happened. I’ve given instructions that whoever overdraws power will be punished,” said Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who is trying to restore essential services such as mass transit.
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» Bigger than the entire U.S. and Canada population, combined: Northern India’s power grid apparently couldn’t handle all the people on it, so down it went early Monday morning. While roughly 60 percent of power has been restored, fans and air conditioners stopped working in 90-degree heat, and the city of New Delhi basically went dark. On the other hand, the annoyance wasn’t one that Indian residents had never experienced before — the country has fairly regular power outages, and backup generators are a way of life for hospitals and businesses.
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Let’s be honest with ourselves, residents of DC: We’re kind of jerks to one another when the power’s out in our homes and we have to go to coffee shops just to charge our laptops and cell phones. (It’s understandable, just sort of weirdly cutthroat.) I’ve personally seen this dynamic at half a dozen places today, including a Barnes & Noble full of people laying on the floor trying to keep their laptops charged while their power was out. It doesn’t have to be like this though. Want to make friends today? Bring a power strip with you to Panera. (photo by edkohler) — Ernie @ SFB
» Strong, windy and quick: As anyone in the Mid-Atlantic region will tell you, the storm that slammed the region last night was there and gone within an hour — but for a good half an hour or so, it was heavy. The style of storm even has a proper name — the derecho. Or as National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Jackson put it: ”It’s one of those storms. It just plows through.” And yes, this storm is what took down Netflix and Instagram.
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We have more than half our system down. This is definitely going to be a multi-day outage.Pepco spokeswoman Myra Oppel • Discussing the major power outage in the Washington DC metro region, which turned off the lights for more than 2 million people last night. (Including us. Thank God for tethering. — ed) The power outage came after a short-but-powerful storm in the wake of a record heat wave on Friday — the temperature hit 104.
An outage of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud in North Virginia has taken down Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram, and other services. According to numerous Twitter updates and our own checks, all three services are unavailable as of Friday evening at 9:10 p.m. PT.
Amazon’s service health dashboard indicates that there are power issues in its North Virginia data center, most likely caused by severe storms in the region.
OH GOD THE POWER IS OUT AND NETFLIX IS DOWN. WHAT DO I DO? — Ernie @ SFB
Update (7:45 a.m.): Netflix and Pinterest? Back up. (Hearing word Instagram is still down, though.) Bigger problem? The power’s still out. More than 2 million lost power in the Mid-Atlantic region last night. Mind you, it was insanely hot yesterday, so this is bad.
Intense wind storms over the west this morning: Strong Santa Ana winds began Wednesday night; they caused damage (as seen above in home footage near Pasadena) and major power outages. Around 25,000 were without power under Southern California Edison’s jurisdiction. The National Weather Service said that the winds will likely continue through Friday, causing more flight delays. As you might imagine, Winds of this strength are causing some concern. Let’s hope that (on top of all this other stuff) one of California’s four seasons doesn’t start soon: Fire, landslides, earthquakes and riots. source
» A missed deadline: More than a week after an early-season snowstorm crippled the Northeast, some parts of Connecticut — still — don’t have power. While officials for Connecticut Light and Power planned to have 99 percent of all Connecticut residents’ power on by now, the company admitted defeat Sunday night. ”We have missed our goal, and for that I apologize to everyone,” said Jeffrey Butler, the company’s president. “We have not met our expectations and those we set for all of you.” Butler blamed two strong storms in a two month period — Hurricane Irene and the snowstorm — for the trouble.
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