Here’s a country boy method to detect vacation freezer outage: drink half a bottle of Gatorade, put the cap back on; place bottle in freezer, upside down; when leaving the house, turn the bottle right side up. When you come back home and the frozen Gatorade is still in the upper half of the bottle, you know that any power outage didn’t last long enough to let sugar water thaw.
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When I moved, I found breast milk in those little jars at the bottom of the chest freezer …that had been there for 13 years. Tasted good in my coffee.
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Excuse my ignorance, but are power outage so common that you actually need to do such a thing?
I remember one power outage during the last ten years, and another in 2005. Which was national news back then, and has it’s own Wikipedia entry. (Plus, you wouldn’t have had to worry about your freezer, I reckon.)
Used to be more of a thing. We got blackouts a few times a year when I was a kid.
I used to live in a place where if a tree so much as looked at a power line, there would be a power outage.
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Have to ask my parents about that. I remember one incident, which was great fun as a kid. A flat lit by candles, Grandma’s conserved fruits and pickled vegetables from Weck-glasses, and a blanket fort against the cold.
Of course, now as well as then, there’s the occasional construction site accident cutting off a house or even a street when the excavator cuts a cable. But even that is quite rare, I feel. They’ve got plans which show the power likes, after all…
Our [in U.S., in my experience] power lines for the most part aren’t buried, so…high winds or ice storms + big old trees. Also squirrels.
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We live in ice and wind country with overhead power lines, so yes. Our utility is very good at restoring service, but we had a 48-hour outage last winter. Outside of town, some people were much longer.
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