I guess I'm back from my hurri-cation. Still don't have power.
For those that I haven't communicated with. New Orleans received a direct hit from Hurricane Zeta on Wednesday. It was the strongest possible category 2. One MPH faster winds and it would have been a cat 3. Not much rain; no flooding. Winds didn't cause much damage to homes/building. But it basically knocked out power to the entire city. Lots of power poles and trees down. I think total in LA there were like 2.6 million people without power.
Specifically in New Orleans, the initial guestimate was "up to 10 days" to restore power to the whole city based on past cat 2 storms. They have been able to move faster since there's no street flooding or flood damage to complicate things. By Saturday they had 50% of the city restored. By Monday morning they are up to 82%.
Unfortunately I'm not in that 82%. We're always one of the last people to get power back. My neighborhood has power, but my street is on a small branch-line that only serves a couple dozen homes, so it's (understandably) lower priority than repairs that can restore hundreds or even thousands of people. We bought a generator and fortunately have working internet. Also it's pretty cool temps here so we don't need AC.
All things considered, we faired pretty well. A section of my fence blew down and a small piece of flashing came off the roof overhang. Also a small outdoor plastic storage shed exploded into individual pieces like in a Lego video game.
Anyway, I guess I'm back. Did you miss me?