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01-09-2012, 03:21 PM

Herping in Alaska has its challenges to say the least. Well this weekend was one of those challenging weekends for us Alaskans. We were hit very hard Friday with an endless snow storm that started Friday early and ended Sunday Evening. Our temps bottomed out at -15 by Saturday afternoon with a blinding snowstorm continuing with visibility less than 5 feet with little or no light (we only have 5 hours of light to begin with this time of year). I was forced to plow my 175' drive way three times Saturday or give up on most of it for the remainder of the winter. By Saturday night it was snowing so hard I could not see my 6' fence just three feet way from my front door. I was cleaning my black throat cage when we stated to get power outages only lasting a few minutes at a time then it went out with a bang at 8:00 pm. It been a few years now since our power went out like that so we knew we were in for a tough night. By 1200 I was getting beeping alarms from my reptile room that got me right up and running only to feel the house cooling off way to fast. I walking into my reptile/music room to a ambient temp of 70 and realized we were going to drop even lower. I ran and started a fire and once I got the temps up to 75 I moved my now rather pissed off 4' Black throat and 105lbs Sulcuta Tortoise to the upstairs living room. Poor guy thinking about it heres comes me grabbing him out of a dark cold tank with a flash light that would scare me for sure. I spent the the rest of that night and all day Sunday burning wood and keeping him and my tortoise as warm as I can. Boy or Boy trying to find my wood pile and dig wood out of the 48" of new snow at -20 in the dark is so much fun when it took me almost 10 minutes just to reach my wood pile. This really make me rethink my plans of moving my reptile room to the barn. All went well this time. How have any of you dealt with power outages. I put off the new generator this year to tile my basement floor but next year I will have a nice working generator and space heater ready. Now we have just three more months of dark days and snow to go so for now I have my fingers crossed.

01-09-2012, 03:21 PM	#1
Chris Wilkinson	Close call as power goes out Herping in Alaska has its challenges to say the least. Well this weekend was one of those challenging weekends for us Alaskans. We were hit very hard Friday with an endless snow storm that started Friday early and ended Sunday Evening. Our temps bottomed out at -15 by Saturday afternoon with a blinding snowstorm continuing with visibility less than 5 feet with little or no light (we only have 5 hours of light to begin with this time of year). I was forced to plow my 175' drive way three times Saturday or give up on most of it for the remainder of the winter. By Saturday night it was snowing so hard I could not see my 6' fence just three feet way from my front door. I was cleaning my black throat cage when we stated to get power outages only lasting a few minutes at a time then it went out with a bang at 8:00 pm. It been a few years now since our power went out like that so we knew we were in for a tough night. By 1200 I was getting beeping alarms from my reptile room that got me right up and running only to feel the house cooling off way to fast. I walking into my reptile/music room to a ambient temp of 70 and realized we were going to drop even lower. I ran and started a fire and once I got the temps up to 75 I moved my now rather pissed off 4' Black throat and 105lbs Sulcuta Tortoise to the upstairs living room. Poor guy thinking about it heres comes me grabbing him out of a dark cold tank with a flash light that would scare me for sure. I spent the the rest of that night and all day Sunday burning wood and keeping him and my tortoise as warm as I can. Boy or Boy trying to find my wood pile and dig wood out of the 48" of new snow at -20 in the dark is so much fun when it took me almost 10 minutes just to reach my wood pile. This really make me rethink my plans of moving my reptile room to the barn. All went well this time. How have any of you dealt with power outages. I put off the new generator this year to tile my basement floor but next year I will have a nice working generator and space heater ready. Now we have just three more months of dark days and snow to go so for now I have my fingers crossed.