My power went out shortly before 10 p.m. on Sunday night and I decided to put on my winter coat and inadequate rubber boots and head outside to survey the immediate neighborhood to see who else had lost power. The lights were still on in the library parking lot and at Guild Hall, but that wasn’t why it was so eerily light outdoors as the big wind-up grandfather clock in my living room ticked toward 12. The whiteout of snow that clung to every branch, roof, and fence — and blasted through the air sideways — refracted the light, somehow, in some way that magnified the glow, making the night the brightest I’ve ever seen. It reminded me of the brief nighttime of a solar eclipse.
Having scouted briefly a short distance up and down Main Street, I returned home after only 10 minutes, imagining the entire duration of my short foray that a tree or powerline would fall directly on my head, personally, before I could make it back into my cozy house. Nothing befell me, but my winter coat and woolly hat were soaking wet when I stomped into the living room, kicking the snow off on the doorjamb. It was a very wet snow.
The dark and quiet of the house felt comfortable immediately. Indeed, the recognition that it’s more pleasant to be unplugged from electronics was instantaneous as I wandered around finding supplies in the not-really-that-dark. The light from the strange snow world outside allowed me to putter around perfectly well, finding my matches, my candlesticks, my hurricane lamp, my pita chips, my tzatziki dip, and a paperback copy of “The Friday Afternoon Club” by Griffin Dunne. It was only when I went to find the extra-chunky candles I bought at the Bargain Box during Winter Storm Fern that it took a moment for my eyes to adjust.
The annoying thing about a power outage, at my age, is not being able to read easily by candlelight. I put on a woolly hat and got into bed looking like Wee Willie Winkie and read with the aid of three candles — two in hurricane lamps and a third just stuck in a candlestick — positioned as closely as possible to the bedside. I had to heap my pillows at the edge of the bed so I could hold the paperback three inches from the light. After a few minutes of this I returned to the dark pantry to fetch the fire extinguisher; it seemed prudent to keep it nearby. I read the first two chapters of “The Friday Afternoon Club,” but it was very slow going.
By now it was 1 a.m., and I blew out the candles, but I did not sleep. I rolled this way and that by the eerie light coming from the windows, listening to the wind and to heavy slumps of snow sliding off the roof. (I think that’s what those thumps were? Either that or, perhaps, gremlins riding innertube sleds down from the peak, landing with muffled giggles in the drifts.) I checked the time on my cellphone, which was swiftly running out of juice, and it was 2:39 a.m. The scene outside my bedroom windows was no longer a picturesque if spooky view of snow-burdened trees and hedgerow but a blur of violet-tinged whiteout; it was like being inside a cloud, inside the white-and-purple twister lifting the house to Oz. And then I didn’t sleep a while longer.
At 3:20 a.m. I got out of bed with purpose and went to the refrigerator to stuff the frozen contents of my freezer (three flavors of ice cream, a tray of chicken tikka masala, a bag of peas, and crinkle-cut fries) into my biggest stockpot, the one we cook the lobster in. Inside the utility closet off the kitchen I was able by the strange light of the window to find a roll of floral wire with which to tie on the stockpot lid and then — still marveling at how not-really-dark it was — I opened the kitchen door and shoved the stockpot down into the deep snow. Every branch in the garden was heavy and bent under four, five, six inches of clinging snow.
Now the dog and cat were on the hoof, as they say, following me around the house as the grandfather clock ticked toward 4, meowing and whining for their breakfast. It was 4 a.m. I scolded them and put an extra quilt on my bed and then relighted the three candles. That was when it occurred to me I could check the PSEG Long Island power outage map by connecting my laptop to my iPhone’s hotspot to get online. What a bore! I did it anyway, counting outages at 4 in the morning. I counted the number of customers in the Town of East Hampton whose power was out and it was 466 customers impacted by 13 outages. (It would rise above 3,000 customers, later in the morning, before I stopped checking.)
I can report authoritatively that the wind picked up between 4 and 4:30 Monday morning. The dog didn’t like it and began turning circles outside my bedroom door — turning and turning in a widening gyre, like the falcon in Yeats’s “Second Coming” — scared by the strange weather and the strange noises and strange light. I relented and let her into my room. By this time, it was quite cold in the house.
There was lightning at 4:30 a.m. in the Village of East Hampton! I saw it! Either that or, possibly, power lines arcing?
Although I had not read about it before the blizzard struck, the blizzard apparently had a name. I discovered this when I checked the morning news headlines around 8 a.m. — after about two hours’ sleep, when I was woken by friends texting to see if my power was still out. (My power was still out. It still is. I’m not sure when it will be back.) This interesting weather event was “Winter Storm Hernando.” That doesn’t sound quite right, does it? “Hernando” is too tropical, too disco, too ABBA. What about Blanca, maybe? Blanche? “Blizzard Blanche” has a certain ring.