Power Outage From the Storm

Since we moved from Capitol Hill to northern Virginia two years ago we have had four - or five - power outages. At least on Capitol Hill the wires were buried and any power outages were related to human error. Here, the wires are very much above ground and it was a specific question we asked about before moving - is there a generator? Ironically the first two times the power did go out we still had lighting in half of the house and the refrigerator stayed on. Last summer, the lights went out everywhere including the hallways and elevator. It was completely dark. Luckily it was the afternoon and I used my power pack to charge my phone. Last night at around 10 PM it started to lightning and pour rain. The lights flickered, came back on, then everything went out except for the back up battery light. What made it worse was that the lights were on in the building across from us as well as all the street lights. It reminded me of living in the Midwest and our one block was always dark and everyone around us always had light. There was no warning about this storm, and the weather app hadn’t indicated rain - but growing up in the south made me an expert at weather predictions. I felt it coming. So I got on the Old Dominion Power app to report the outage, called the front desk and sent an email asking what happened to the generator. We didn’t hear anything back from anyone - which I thought was odd. The power came back on at 12:30 PM. This morning we got an email from the building that the generator works in the building, but not specific units. Something has changed from when we first moved in until now. I have a feeling we will never learn why. I also found out that my phone and iPad are never charged when these things happen and that I can’t watch any streaming services without Wi-Fi. We certainly depend on electricity for so many things. It seems these outages are happening with greater frequency and storms are expected again tonight. Yippee. We will keep our flashlights at the ready. The light under my flying carpet mobile looked lovely. I suppose we can always get in the car to power up our devices and stay cool if necessary.