(In case you’re wondering, here’s the link to wikipedia (and my archive), and to youtube (and my archive).)
During my holidays at the cottage this year, I had the usual plans: A lot of relaxing, maybe a bit of boating, possibly some cycling on some nearby cycling trails, definitely a lot of cooking especially at the beginning, mostly of desserts to be frozen for eating during my stay at the cottage, and of course, some wood splitting to fill up the wood pile. No matter that said wood shed is already three quarters full after last year’s work and what I did burn over the winter.
As you can see, I already had a lot of wood on my woodpile.
Part of my plans, nonetheless, involved cutting up a couple of big birch trees which we had felled by a real lumberjack last autumn, because the trees were liable to fall any time, possibly the wrong way.
Early on during my vacation, I met friends at a flea market somewhat nearby to the cottage, and afterwards I welcomed them at the cottage for an afternoon meal and visit. However, that day, 21 July 2026, we had a little bit of weather at the cottage (here’s my archive).
My friends were ready to pack up anyway as it was starting to rain heavily, and there had already been a few rounds of lightning and thunder at that point. As it turns out, they had to drive through the worst of the weather!
In the meantime, the cottage lost power from 20260721 at 17:41, shortly after my friends had departed. I was slightly beside myself without power, receiving advice to pack up not even five days into my holiday to go home … but I waited it out, and I won my bet in sticking through it all. Yay Hydro-Québec! … but, I have just jumped a bit ahead of myself.
I almost immediately started making a lot of calls back home (good thing old fashioned phones usually work during power outages!) to get Hydro-Québec (the power company here in Québec, where I live) updates on the storm. Said updates went from:
- 19:45 power return a mere couple of hours after the storm;
- to noon on the following day;
- to noon on the second day after the storm;
- to still noon on the second day after the storm, but because crews had “finished” a lot of the work in the grouping around my address and the number of affected clients had dramatically dropped, it seemed that on said second morning, a work crew hadn’t yet been assigned to fix the branch of wires my cottage was on.
But again, I’m getting ahead of the story.
During the storm, I heard a tree fall; I figured it came from our spare lot beside the cottage. As it turned out, it was indeed from our spare lot, and it fell onto the road!
After the storm had passed, I went out onto the road to investigate, particularly since I could hear other people talking, and in fact said persons were walking down my driveway.
On the road, we found the following:
As can be seen above, people were hoping to pass, and the person who usually deals with events such as this had appeared on site and began to cut up the tree, in order to clear the way.
The power came back on on 20260723 at about 11:35. As of this writing, we’re still waiting on Update 20260724: According to La Presse (here’s my archive) (yeah it’s in French, deal with it) and CBC news (here’s my archive) Environment Canada Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) to announce whether has confirmed that it was indeed a tornado.
At this point, this story is going to take a bit of a detour.
During the power outage, I learned that my two Ryobi 7.5 Ah batteries for my lawnmower, using a Ryobi converter, can each power my cottage fridge for a bit over an hour on a full charge.
To state what may be obvious, I had to protect two weeks’ worth of food and groceries and already-done baking in the fridge and freezer.
After the storm but long before the power came back on, I learned from people with whom I’d spoken on the road, that the effects of the storm was worse but a kilometre or two north of me. I didn’t drive there, but I hear that it was like a disaster zone and would take several days to a week or more to repair everything.
Stories from neighbours convinced me to embark mid afternoon on a folly of a trip to secure a generator, something I could not fully convince myself that I’d need after a hopefully short period of time.
I went down to a nearby city (Lachute) to get a generator for the fridge … but between gasping at the prices, trying to figure out what I’d do with a generator after the power came back (or after I evacuated if it were to be too long), and remembering that I used to have an inverter for my car which I had used before to power the same fridge, I decided to buy a new inverter instead. Immediately prior to leaving on the folly of a trip, I brought with me my lawnmower batteries to recharge at the community centre as a backup plan, since I had also learned that the power had already been restored there.
On the way back to the cottage, I stopped at the community centre, and I spent about two and a half hours at the centre charging my two lawnmower batteries, and then I made it back to the cottage at approximately 8pm.
As it was starting to get darker (and outright dark by 9pm) I found myself a bit befuddled and I couldn’t quite grasp how to get the inverter to work; as such, I was pleased with myself that I had spent the time earlier to charge my lawnmower batteries, and one was set to work to get the fridge going for another hour or so before the battery drained, and in the process I also went to bed.
The next morning, I managed to get the purchased inverter working perfectly on my car engine, and the fridge was running for a bit over two hours before the power came back on.
At this point, I had a couple of priorities:
- take a bath, which I couldn’t do during the power outage because the water system is a private system on the property dependent on electricity, putting aside the possibility of taking a swim in the lake beside the cottage — and when the power came back on, I was pleasantly surprised that the water in the hot water tank was still relatively hot after roughly 42 hours of no power, and therefore requiring little time for it to get back to temperature;
- and wash the dishes from my entertaining on Tuesday!
… And at this point, the little detour has come back to the wood story.
After finishing up the dishes, I could tell that there was activity going on on the road where the tree had fallen: I ended up helping the person who maintains the roads clear up the tree that he’d cut up a couple of days earlier, mainly during the part when he was shredding the branches less than 3″ thick.
I asked what he was going to do with the rest of the wood, viz. the branches larger than 3″ but which were not the main trunk wood that he had recovered; I already knew from a couple of days earlier that he’d said he’d take the main part of the tree trunk so that he could season the wood, and then mill it and dry it out for lumber. As such, I said I’d take the rest — which was substantial — that he would have otherwise driven to the local ecocentre (here’s my archive) (yes, it’s in French, deal with it.)
Here is a photo of the branches packed into my car:
A little note at this point: The person who was leading with clearing the road noticed my car filled with the wood, and “strongly suggested” (jovially, though with an air of being serious along the lines of “they may feature your story, and perhaps even give you a credit”) that I take photos in order to send to the manufacturer to tell a story of how I use my car … whether I end up doing this remains to be seen, but in the meantime, I mounted this post. 🙂
And, now I have this pile of wood to cut up to place in my wood shed … while you can see on the left of the photo, just behind the propane tank, one of the birch trees that was felled last year, that at this point will at best be cut into logs for seasoning for another year, and hopefully be kept somewhat out of winter snow and spring wetness!
(And as for the rest of the Monty Python sketch … well it’s as old as I am, and it’s still funny!)