They are predicting a monster ice storm in Atlanta on Wednesday. The National Weather Service this morning said:
"Lets just start by saying this winter storm may be of historic proportions for portions of the area. We are looking at significant snowfall totals north /especially northeast/ and significant...Crippling...Ice totals especially along the Interstate 20 corridor. The highest ice totals will be in a rough wedge generally from the metro Atlanta area and points east...South of I-85...And north of I-16." Ice storms are really bad in Atlanta because there are many trees, and the limbs break off an interrupt power. Especially pine trees. We were out for a week one time, and we live in the city (inside the Perimeter highway). This demonstrates the fragility of modern technology. Cold fusion home generators would eliminate power failures caused by the disruption of the distribution network. I guess it would cause other power failures from faulty generators. This problem can be ameliorated with redundant equipment. That is expensive but it is what they used to with minicomputers. Once the generators become highly reliable, a failure should be about as rare as your refrigerator breaking. (My refrigerator did, once, fail completely.) - Jed
