Rainbow after the storm.

Roaring winds, horizontal rain, scared horses, hiding dogs, we were in a mini cyclone! Sunday afternoon, about 2:30pm, out of the west, a small, fast moving, intense storm cut a path through our property and many others for many kilometres, leaving trees down on roads and across power lines causing a blackout.

No power for 26 hours when you live in country NSW means no water because the tank water is fed into the house via a pressure pump, so no showers, and no flushing toilet (and the on site sewerage system is in danger of going off because there is no aeration pump, thankfully didn't happen). Hoses to chook houses and horse troughs were not working either, so out with the buckets and down to the horse shed to the only tank not fitted with a pressure pump. We have a gas cook top so having a cuppa and cooking dinner was easy enough. We use old kerosene lanterns on the verandah and in the garden so they came inside. 

As the hours wore on battery backup in our local telephone exchanges wore down and so the exchanges were off line. Mobile phone batteries flattened and put many more people out of the loop. 

We have 10kw of solar panels generating electricity everyday, but we cannot use this power as it is sold into the grid and we buy back from them. Annoying, but on any other day we are happy that we have a small income and don't think about not being able to use it directly.

Many years ago I lived an alternate lifestyle without grid power and had none of these problems, and now I realise how dependent we have become on electricity.

Daughter number 3 visited today and made me a peg rainbow to cheer me up.