Surviving 9 Days of "Stormageddon"

We had a fun-filled family Christmas this year (2021) except for a couple of disappointments. We lost our precious Mom/Abuelita on Dec. 17th. A snow storm over Donner Summit prohibited our daughter Michelle, and husband Riley, from spending the holiday with us in Colfax. We did a ZOOM call while everyone opened their gifts. On Christmas Day we welcomed Ryan, Janai and their 4 little ones to the house, as well as our youngest son, Matt. We had a delicious traditional turkey dinner after opening gifts and watching the grandchildren have a blast playing with all their gifts. The day after Christmas was a Sunday, and a huge storm was predicted to come into the Foothills by afternoon. Ryan and Janai returned to the Bay Area because they pastor a church and needed to be there for Sunday. I kept the 3 older grandkids here with us. Ryan came back in the afternoon to our home just as the snowflakes were starting to fall and stick to the ground.The children were very excited about seeing snow! We all retired for the night that Sunday evening and awoke to 13" of snow and NO ELECTRICITY. We live in a beautiful forested area of Northern California, and haven't had a substantial snowfall in many years (we've been in a drought in California). The snowfall was very wet and heavy, so there were many limbs and branches that had broken from the heavy snow. Debris covered our driveway and the road that leads to our house. We live atop a steep, paved driveway, but there was over 13 inches of snow covering the driveway. Even with a 4-wheel drive, the drive to the bottom of the hill was treacherous. My husband, Mark, son Ryan, and a neighbor, Don, ended up shoveling the 1/3 of a mile driveway so that a vehicle could follow a path down to our main road. Ultimately, no one was able to get down our hill until Thursday (4 days later). In the meantime, our old neighborhood, Alta Sierra, in Grass Valley, was described as looking like a "war zone." Trees had snapped in half, utility poles had fallen, trees had toppled onto homes and vehicles, and most of the city had no power. Grass Valley/Nevada City is where our church is located-in Nevada County-and they get even more snow than we do in Colfax. Thank God that we only had a few branches snap-off during the storm--no damage to any of our property. PG&E had a monumental task ahead of them and they deployed linemen and tree-trimmers to replace utility poles and fallen lines. These linemen came from Southern California, as well as from other states. We were elated when we got our electricity back at 3:15PM on January 4th! Without electricity, many people were unable to keep warm in their homes. There was also a problem with propane deliveries, so some residents ran out of propane and had to stay with friends or seek lodging in a hotel or shelter. Our church regained power relatively early in the game, so we served as a Red Cross Warming Center for several days. We took in our 86-year old neighbor for 3 days because her house got down to 46 degrees and because our road was inaccessible, her son couldn't get up to her home to take her to his property which is closer to Sacramento. She ended-up enjoying our family chaos with 4 little ones running around (well, 3 running around--one is still a nursing infant). She became an adopted Grandma to Josiah, Stella and Sophia. They fell in love with "Grandma Reba". I am happy to report that NONE of OUR FOOD spoiled during the outage! We had a large freezer in our garage (a 43 year-old Montgomery Ward brand) that kept the food preserved. I only opened it once a day to take a peek and we plugged in our small Honda generator for 3 hours at night to keep it cold. I removed all the food from the kitchen refrigerator and put in ice chests that I kept in a sunporch that doubled as a "walk-in" fridge. I made homemade ice chests by placing the food in plastic storage bins and filled with snow. Items such as eggs, fruit, and salad fixings didn't even need to be put in ice chests because the porch was cool enough to keep such items fresh. I felt very good that no food had to be tossed because I had more food than usual on-hand because of guests for the holidays. I always pre-prepare meals and freeze, so I had several meals that could be pulled out and heated to serve the family. We were so grateful for our old-fashioned woodstove! That kept us warm and toasty and I was able to cook atop the stove. We had plenty of wood, so that was not an issue. We were able to heat water for washing dishes and for taking sponge baths or "hillbilly showers" as I called them. We were able to prepare some yummy meals using woodstove, although it is a bit tricky because of uncontrollable heat regulation. You really need to stay close to the pot as you cook! The other challenge that we faced was not having any WATER! Our water comes from a well, which has an ELECTRIC pump to get water to our home. So, when our power goes out, there won't be any water coming from the faucet! When my parents moved into this house 36 years ago, they were always prepared for heavy snow and the possibility of outages. They would collect water in milk jugs and empty bleach bottles. It seems very "ghetto", but when you are out of water, aesthetics are irrelevant! I have approximately 50 gallons of water in the garage. When we ran out, we would go to our neighbor's home to refill the jugs because she has city water-not a well. We also would melt snow to use for flushing toilets. We have two Brita water pitchers to filter water for drinking or cooking just to be sure it was safe. We recently purchased a water purifier that campers and backpackers use to filter water from streams, and in the event that our neighbor's water supply was unavailable, we would resort to going down to the pond on our property and retrieving water from there for drinking. Fortunateley, the huge amount of snow provided a water source as well. A few years back we purchased a small Honda generator. Mark set it up just outside our front door and then, using extension cords, we could plug in a lamp, get a coffeemaker going in the morning, and charge our electronic devices (usually cell phones). We would run the gas-operated generator for about 1 1/2 hours in the morning and 3 hours at night. At the end of 9 days, my husband said the generator had used less than 3 gallons of fuel! That means it only cost us about $13 for our energy needs during this LONG outage! We know that many people have larger generators and that can get very costly, but we were willing to "rough-it" for a few days. One thing that we bought a few years ago was some headlamps--these are amazing! We did set up a kerosene lamp and some candles while we had a houseful of people. We had a good supply of batteries for a portable radio/CD player, our flashlights/headlamps, etc. Our grandkids absolutely loved sledding down on the hills on our property! Here in California, people will say, "Let's go to the snow." That means you go from the Bay Area or the Valley and "head up the hill" toward Tahoe and the ski areas. We had planned to do that with family after Christmas, but the snow came to US! We were quite tired at the end of the 9 days--it takes all day to just survive. We get up, we start a fire, gather wood, clean ashes from woodstove, prepare meals, fetch water, wash dishes, shovel snow, keep an eye on the food supply and keep it iced, etc. The day before our power was restored, I drove 30 miles down to Roseville to our son's home to do two loads of laundry and to shower. I thought I had died and gone to Heaven when I felt that wonderful hot shower! It was great to have clean clothes and dishcloths, too. Everyday I thank God for water, for electricity, food, lights---all those things we take for granted! I would encourage those who live up here in the Foothills to be prepared for these type of emergencies and plan ahead! We didn't think that this storm was going to be such a big deal because oftentimes the forecast will call for a huge storm and then it never materializes. All in all, we are grateful for God's care over all of our family during this challenging time :)