About 1 million people have no power here

We had a short lived, but VERY destructive storm last night. I had to drive around a couple trees this morning that had fallen into the road. I'm lucky to have power in my home, but the majority of the DC/Northern VA metropolitan area is without power.

Most of the streetlights have no power right now and people are freaking out so there were so many accidents today that I saw since people just plowed through the intersections in a hurry.

I had to work today. I showed up at work at 5:30 am and the entire strip where my work is located was pitch black. Went inside and sure enough there was no power. I had my tiny cellphone flashlight and 30 dogs to walk and feed. It was only myself and one other person until my boss came in around 9 to help out.

We had to "close" for the day since there isn't power. No daycare dogs, but we still had boarding dogs coming in and out.

The worst is that it is SO hot and no power means no AC. That's why I called my boss and she came in. We had dogs overheating that we needed to cool down. Two English bulldogs in particular were having a tough time.

My boss bought a portable AC unit and her ex husband was in PA and found a generator and brought that down for us. One of my coworkers picked up some cheap lights and flashlights as well. We had to pile all the dog crates into one room and stick the store parrot in a crate in that room as well so they could all have access to the AC and fans that we set up with the generator.

To say today has been eventful is a bit of an understatement. Either my boss is going to stay overnight or me and a few coworkers will take shifts staying there with the dogs tonight to make sure they stay cool and to make sure no one steals the generator.

Please spare some good thoughts for the dogs at my work and for the power situation going on right now out here. I just saw on the news that they are calling for another bad storm tonight.

Cool thoughts for the dogs at your work place.

I hope the electricity gets restored soon and that the storm you guys have coming in is less severe.

...it really is the end of the world as we know it.

Hope power gets restored quickly! If your boss can't/doesn't stay the night, please be safe driving back and forth through a storm :-/

You don't realize how much you rely on power until it is gone. We were the subject of a day long power cut last week and it was dreadful. I know there are people in the world who don't even have electricity and I may seem selfish for complaining about being without for a day... but it is a shock how much you need it.

We lost power before the storm even hit us. We were sitting in the kitchen eating and everything went black. Then the wind started, then the rain, then the crazy lightning. I've never seen so much lightning. The sky was SO BRIGHT. If the wind wasn't blowing so incredibly hard I would have loved to go outside to see it, but trees and branches were blowing all over the place.

We still have no power. It's so hot. Bleh.

This pretty accurately describes what it looks like here right now. Most of the area doesn't have power, and no one understands what to do at stop lights. -_-

Thoughts are with you and everyone else affected. They had scary weather service warnings late night yesterday. Burlington and counties that are far away, but that must have been the storm direction. Hale, destructive winds...Al Gore warned us

Yeah we were out for about 18 hours -- not bad and we were in good shape but I'm glad the power kicked back in before the real heat of the day arrived. Trees snapped in half, etc. Mess.

Caitlin there were multiple trees down and in roads this morning. They managed to move most of them by the time I got off work but there are still downed trees on the sides of the roads.

I hope the storm they are predicting for this evening isn't as bad. Apparently 10 people have died so far between the states affected by this storm/heat etc. Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio declared a state of emergency... Not sure what other neighboring states have declared or not yet. They said this power outage will more than likely be a multiple day thing and it could be a week before things are completely back to normal.

I definitely didn't realize how much I rely on electricity and technology. I stressed out bad at work because of the lack of power and AC. Also cellphones have pretty much had little to no service around here as well. My cellphone bar is going between 0 and 1 bar right now.

Oh my gosh sending vibes!

I know twice a year we all go through it here with tornado season and it's scary. Not having power may be considered by some people as a luxury but it's a necessity imo.

Seems to be international. =( We're having an aweful strom as we speak - The walls are shaking from the thunder and it's hailing.

Thankfully it takes ALOT for there to be poweroutages here.

Stay safe!!!

OMG last night was crazyyyy. I am dogsitting at someone's house and was so scared by myself, LOL. I wasn't expecting a storm at all and that wind was insane. And the lightening!

Today, I do have power at this house thank goodness but most of the other houses around do not. There's about 88,000 out in this county alone, I think. But my friend and I had planned to go to the movies and decided to try it anyways early around 11, the mall was insane but we got there easily. Then on the way home a bunch of roads were blocked, a ton of power was out, lights were out and the gas stations are CRAZY. Very few places have gas. We had people cussing at each other and cutting people off, and I'm like woah people. We've only not had power for a DAY. Imagine if it goes out for weeks. I think we'd all kill each other.

Speaking of the possibility of power going out for weeks... My little sister's power went out in Annandale, VA. She is at my Aunt's house right now and heard that it mat be about 8 days or so for power to be back on.

yep, I spent most of today driving a Kubota back and forth from a pond, pumping water into troughs to carry water to a herd of ~60 horses.

The power came back on at a little before 3 in the afternoon, so we didn't even have it all that bad, considering!

That storm was quite something to watch, though!

I can't believe how many trees are down! Almost every road was blocked. A lot of roads are still a mess.



Adam's cell phone hasn't been working. He's on AT&T. I have Verizon and have been mostly okay.

I had no idea it was even supposed to rain. When the lights started to flicker and then just went out I was so confused. Then five minutes later the trees were sideways and the sky was bright as day, lol.

My friend was stuck at a gas station earlier. Not because there's no gas, but because nothing has power. So crazy.

No rain here but a dreadful house fire two blocks away, smoke everywhere

Still no power at my house. Rumor has it they'll have it back on Wednesday...5 days w/o a/c in 95-100 degree weather is not fun Poor little fluffy black dog!

Annnnd we're supposed to leave for europe wednesday. somehow i have to coordinate with the dog sitter, print airline tickets, stop the mail, etc by using library computers and printers!

My work was crazy too, but we got our power back at around 4pm. They returned power to places that NEED it in Mclean like hospitals, and that included animal hospitals. Most of Mclean is still without power, including most stoplights. Although everyone I saw in that area was actually driving intelligently and treating the non-working stoplights as stop signs like they are supposed to.

Fauquier county, where I am petsitting at my parents' house, doesn't seem to have been affected by power outages. And gee its hard to type this with a large cat on your face...

I'm glad they returned the power to you guys at work Cristy. The vet clinic next to my work was also without power yesterday and when my boss talked to them to see if they had a potential plan in place (since they have kenneled animals too) they just shrugged their shoulders.

Yesterday I almost ended up trying to get a hold of any vet in town since we had a couple English bulldogs that were really struggling with the heat. Problem is my phone wouldn't connect to the internet for the majority of the day so I wouldn't know of more than a couple vets to check. Thank goodness one of my coworkers that had power decided to just take the bulldogs home with them so they can stay cooler.

Right now its a little after 4am. I'm heading into work early. My coworkers have been taking turns tonight checking in on the dogs to make sure they are ok and since I'm the opening shift leader I figured I'd go in early this morning. Hopefully the last person there left the flashlights where I can find them.

Just showed up at work. I'm the ONLY living soul in the entire shopping center and I'm actually scared to go inside.

Here's a photo I just snapped. That's the Dunkin Donuts and my dog daycare is to the left. All of these stores usually have night lights on, but now its pitch black.


Should I mention that I'm actually a little afraid of the dark? I have to go park behind the building since all the dogs were moved last night to our other building behind the shopping center. Oh and the neighborhood behind the shopping center isn't a great one exactly which makes me all the more chicken sh@t right now.