Interesting weather
The creek that runs through the village where I live was virtually bone dry over the summer due to the drought. Now it's barely staying in its banks. We had a brief reprieve from Sandy today when the sun broke through the clouds for a few hours. However, the forecast is for heavy rains again tonight and tomorrow. I'm glad I'm up the hill.
Down the highway about half an hour is a town with it's own on-grid generating station. When the grid goes down, not too uncommon in this area, they flip a switch, and within 15 minutes, everything within town limits (which doesn't include the supermarket) has power again. During our not uncommon power failures, we head there for a dinner out.
I had been thinking in past years of proposing to the village council that the creek might make a sufficient micro-hydro project to be an emergency back-up for just the village, a little micro-grid. However, after this year, I think I am forced to give up on the idea. Farther up the creek is an old mill which was turned into a micro-hydro station. It usually generates enough power to light up a half dozen homes. This year was the first time since the mill was built that there was no water to turn the turbine. Even the big drought in the 50s didn't see the creek get that dry.
The task of designing resilient communities has now gotten much more difficult, but the need is now that much more apparent.
