<p>National weather reports ice storms and power failures coming to the Midwest starting Sunday night, through Monday, Jan. 15.</p>
<p>Please check your local weather and if power lines might come down (ice breaks off tree branches), urge your kids to download their work NOW onto paper and work off-line if they have to complete essays. </p>
<p>Consider mailing as a backup if your region loses power. </p>
<p>In our community, this kind of weather took away our power (heat, light, electricity, some phones) for a week in October. Your cellphones might work, but find out which friends have a generator at home so you can go over there and recharge your phone. </p>
<p>Get out your candles, bottled water, extra food. Make sure elders are set up okay.</p>
<p>Be prepared. I'm not trying to be alarmist, just trying to be helpful.</p>
<p>Great advice, paying; this also applies to those working on financial aid forms (not sure if anyone has one due Jan. 15th, but I one due Jan. 31st and several due Feb. 1st for priority consideration!)</p>
<p>Also: If you have an electric garage door opener, see if there's a release mechanism so you can open it and get your cars out. Don't leave your cars locked inside the garage door, in other words.</p>
<p>If the college applied to is in those possibly affected areas, they might be down with their phones or computers.</p>
<p>If others have tips to share re: power failures, chime in please!</p>
<p>If the outage looks to be widespread, gas stations may be down - so make sure your cars are all on full.</p>
<p>We have a generator - got really tired of outages. If you do have a generator, remeber to start it periodically so that it is in good running order.</p>
<p>assuming you still have a landline, make sure you have a phone that doesn't run on electricity, the old fashioned corded phone. Useless if phone lines are down, but good if it's only the electricity that is out.</p>
<p>Having recently (last month) been without electricity for six days, and phone, television and Internet service for fourteen (that's FOURTEEN days without Internet!), I am now, of course, an expert.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you have a portable generator, run it outdoors. If your garage is attached to your house, do not run it in the garage. Do not run it in the basement. Do not run it in the living room. Carbon monoxide in insidious, and gets in all sorts of ways. Our garage is attached to the house, but is down a half-story. With the laundry room door closed, the inside door to the garage closed, and the generator sitting on the driveway outside the main garage door, we could still sometimes smell exhaust in the house. We ran a battery-powered carbon monoxide detector in the room nearest the garage.</p></li>
<li><p>DO NOT use charcoal or other combustible indoors, unless it is in a properly vented fireplace. Several people died in Washington by doing this last month.</p></li>
<li><p>Cell phones don't work after the backup batteries in the towers go dead.</p></li>
<li><p>Internet and cable TV system (like Comcast) phones do not work when the power goes out. The ONLY public services that worked after the windstorm were gas and water, which are underground, and the plain old-fashioned POTS telephone line hooked up to our fax machine. We plugged our 25-year-old Western Electric Princess phone into this line and had some communications with the outside world.</p></li>
<li><p>The first thing to plug into your generator is the refrigerator. The second is the circuit that goes to your gas furnace.</p></li>
<li><p>It's easier to carry three 2-gallon gas cans than one 5-gallon gas can.</p></li>
<li><p>If you think really bad weather is coming, fill the gas tank in all your cars the day before. Stations need electricity to pump gas.</p></li>
<li><p>Stay away from trees. They fall down and stuff breaks off them.</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>If a mouse has built a nest in the recoil starter of the generator, and you decapitate the mouse when attempting to start the generator ... the starter may stick. It can be fixed by someone clever (this would be my husband, who was of course out of town during the excitement). </p></li>
<li><p>When purchasing the generator, be sure to account for start-up power for the water pump and furnance (we did get this part right!). </p></li>
<li><p>Ideally, the generator should have a properly wired transfer panel or full cutover so your power CANNOT backfeed into the grid. This can be very dangerous to utility workers trying to fix your power.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>see, when I tell my D to not wait until last minute if they can help it, and say, you know the power could go out, the phone lines down, etc,,, I get the eyeroll....well....thankfully I haven't had to say I told you so, but this thread will show I am not just a naggy alarmist mom, but I am thinking....</p>
<p>yes, "citygirlsmom", it works great this way. I get to be the naggy alarmist mom and you the helpful resource person.
Can you get my son to take out the garbage?</p>
<p>You mean other kids do the eyeroll? And I thought it was just mine </p>
<p>We missed a deadline because of the ice storm. Needed to mail a scholarship application with transcript. Had everything but the transcript and school was closed. Oh well there's a lesson learned.</p>
<p>if u are stuck....find someone with a laptop with one of those notebook broadband cards from sprint/nextel/cingular/verizon and log on (if possible).</p>
<p>make sure laptop is powered up and ready to go.</p>
<p>My son had his last bit of scholarship paperwork handed in to his counselor last Tuesday -- all filled out, signed, witnessed and ready to go. He forgot to bring the addressed, stamped envelope on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he forgot to give it ti his counselor. It snowed a lot Wednesday night, but not until after Junior arrived home from school on the bus. My 30 minute commute, starting at 4pm, took four hours and fifteen minutes. School was closed on Thursday and Friday. The scholarship paperwork had to be postmarked by Friday. The form was in the counselor's office, and the envelope was in his book bag. Argh. I got eyerolling Wednesday morning as I was exhorting him to give his counselor the envelope on Wednesday ("Relax, Dad, I have until Friday). Argh.</p>
<p>WashDad, that's wretched. If you've not yet thought of this one: the school's closing Th/Fr for snow might cover your situation, b/c now the GC can append a note and you/she can call ahead to the school about it.</p>
<p>If not for the snow, your son would have corrected the envelope situation on Thurs and the papers would have gone out Thurs or Fri...except for the snow. Get my drift? (oooh, you don't want to hear about drifts)</p>
<p>with all the weather issues, I would bet the schools will let some late application slide so long as they are in a reasonable time...I post marked Tuesday</p>
<p>yea ^^^^ dont worry, ask the Guidance counselor to write a note, and have ur son write a note aswell. Don't make it seem like he waited till the last minute, instead say it in a way that "everything was planned out perfectly until the storm hit which resulted in a total chaotic scenario which I did not expect. I hope you give full consideration to my [whatever] as winter weather did not allow me to send the item on the postmark date."</p>
<p>Good Luck (btw Im in high school and a procrastinator myself, I hope ur son gets in)</p>
<p>When the power went out here (Seattle) the day before the Stanford application was due, I do know that Stanford extended the deadline for those in the PNW area. I'm guessing colleges will do something similar for those in the areas affected, quite possibly even more generous of an extension than citygirlsmom suggested.</p>
<p>Please, don't even talk about snow. I live in Denver. Thank God I didn't have anything due mid-December. Although getting hold of the kids' Christmas presents that we ordered was loads of fun...</p>
<p>Oops, didn't see that the person missing something was from the Seattle area, not the Midwest.</p>
<p>I think it'll be fine, especially since it's a counselor thing. The counselor might even add something about how school was cancelled. My counselor did for a Pomona form that I was going to give him the day school was cancelled in December.</p>