Here it is June 30, and the BC coast has been cool, cloudy and wet since forever—especially on Malcolm Island, where we just spent a cool, cloudy and wet nine days. But I'd rather be here than in the eastern US. Via The New York Times: Storms Leave 3 Million Without Power. Excerpt:
More than three million people in nine states woke up on Saturday morning without power. But after the storms dissipated on Saturday, the heat set in. Temperatures soared into the triple digits in some places. With utility crews struggling, people across the mid-Atlantic faced the prospect of days without electricity.
“You could draw a line from Denver to St. Louis to Washington, D.C. All those areas are in the hundreds right now,” said Daniel Porter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, saying the heat was hurting the recovery effort.
Some sought refuge in movie theaters, coffee shops and malls. On Saturday afternoon, Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Md., was jammed with people seeking air-conditioning and working lights. Dozens camped out on the floor, with laptops, iPads and cellphones plugged into sockets on the walls.
President Obama telephoned the governors of Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia, all of whom declared states of emergency. Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia said his state had suffered the largest “non-hurricane power outage” in its history.
“This will be a multiday restoration effort,” the governor said on his Twitter feed Saturday afternoon, “very much like a hurricane restoration.”
All across the region, people tried to cope. The men’s shelter in northeast Washington where William Burrell was staying lost power and hadn’t regained it by Saturday morning.
“The fans, the air-conditioning, all of it. It was burning up,” he said. “So they opened the doors to try to get some air to circulate through, but by that time the thunderstorm had stopped, and there was the littlest, light breeze, but it wasn’t enough to cool everybody off that was in there.”
Julie B. Rubenstein, a lawyer who lives in Northern Virginia, said that after suffering through the night with no power and no air-conditioning, she sought refuge in her office. She described how friends who rushed to grocery stores to get bags of ice found only long lines and limited supplies. At one point, she said, a “near-fight” broke out over a bag of ice.
“It is great that I had an office I could go to,” she said, “but so many people don’t.”
In Virginia, authorities opened 90 air-conditioned shelters where residents could go to escape the heat.
