# Dangers of patio gigs -- storm story



## Doug Gifford (Jun 8, 2019)

I did my homework and every indication was that we'd be dry until after the gig. This was incorrect.

We were facing east, away from the weather. Started playing "Breezing Along With the Breeze" and it started to get dark. Very dark. Then a few spots of rain. Then the deluge with strong winds. Stopped the song for sure. It came in that fast (the storm was traveling at 90kph according to somebody) and we were caught completely off-guard. With the owner's help, we got our equipment to relative dry, struggling to keep things covered through big gusts but not before it got pretty wet. I'm waiting awhile to plug in my piano but I think it will be okay; ditto my powered speaker. Vlad's cymbals got wet, which is a big bad thing, and he had to take them straight home to clean them up.

And we got off very lightly here compared to west and north of us. Really just a bad storm.


----------



## Mark Brown (Jan 4, 2022)

Sage advice. Plan for the worst and expect it to be worse than that. 

Also, avoid playing songs about the weather.


----------



## Grab n Go (May 1, 2013)

Yup, that was a nasty bit of weather today. Weather advisory over the phone was no joke.


----------



## Griff (Sep 7, 2016)

Did nobody at your gig receive a severe thunderstorm warning?


----------



## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)




----------



## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)




----------



## DaddyDog (Apr 21, 2017)

Our gigs tend to be backyard parties. I feel for you!

With the speaker, beware the cone being damaged. I had two that needed repairs after a good soaking.


----------



## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

Been there! Running for cover is a huge drag, but usually the stages have been covered and we ended up playing to next to nobody. I'm usually...no, always...the first one to say fuck this I'm out of here when there's no cover. 

Bumped into an old bandmate on the street outside the local mom'n'pop music shop yesterday. His solo patio gig was cancelled due to the weather forecast but it had cleared by stage time. So he makes nothing except disappointment.


----------



## slag banal (May 4, 2020)

Always take a few large industrial-sized garbage bags to cover things while other stuff is being moved inside.


----------



## leftysg (Mar 29, 2008)

Grab n Go said:


> Yup, that was a nasty bit of weather today. Weather advisory over the phone was no joke.


 It was crazy here. Election signs probably got blown over to the next riding! The tv warning advisory came on...about five minutes after it had blown through.


----------



## Verne (Dec 29, 2018)

As bad as it got here, from the news stories online, it was far far worse east of us. Sounds like Ottawa/Gatineau bore the brunt of it. Reported (at this time) 5 dead. Mostly from trees coming down.


----------



## Doug Gifford (Jun 8, 2019)

Griff said:


> Did nobody at your gig receive a severe thunderstorm warning?


Yes. It played over the piped-in music as we set up. But I'd looked at the radar maps immediately before the gig and figured that it would pass north of here and much later. I was incorrect.


----------



## laristotle (Aug 29, 2019)

Our power went out for ~ 2hrs.
Neighbour's gazebo went bye-bye like a bouncy castle in these type of storms.


----------



## BGood (Feb 20, 2015)

Doug Gifford said:


> Vlad's cymbals got wet, which is a big bad thing, and he had to take them straight home to clean them up.


Cymbals can rust ? Or OCD can ?


----------



## 2manyGuitars (Jul 6, 2009)

laristotle said:


> Our power went out for ~ 2hrs.
> Neighbour's gazebo went bye-bye like a bouncy castle in these type of storms.


Ottawa here. Power went out around 4pm, came on around 3am.
Worst part is no internet, even on the cell phone. Had a guy come by to buy my Strat and couldn’t do an etransfer. No ATMs either.


----------



## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

I was working in the garage. Had both doors open. It got dark, and I thought “I’ll close these now”. Too late. Power went out. _Then_ the storm ripped through. I had to pull the releases to get them down. After the worst of it, and the rain subsided I fired up Genny and got things ready for round two. 
Our power was out for over 8hrs! At a campsite not too far south of us a tree came down on a trailer. Injured 2, killed the third.

Something wicked this way comes…


----------



## Doug Gifford (Jun 8, 2019)

BGood said:


> Cymbals can rust ? Or OCD can ?


they can oxidize
OCD idunno -- I don't own any $500 cymbals.


----------



## tomee2 (Feb 27, 2017)

2manyGuitars said:


> Ottawa here. Power went out around 4pm, came on around 3am.
> Worst part is no internet, even on the cell phone. Had a guy come by to buy my Strat and couldn’t do an etransfer. No ATMs either.


I'm not home... Flew out a few hours before it hit, luckily I guess. Wife says power is still out and not expected for a few days. Apparently a huge hydro tower came down but I've not confirmed that yet.


----------



## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Derecho leaves roughly 1,000 km of damage, fatalities in its wake


A damaging derecho swept through southern Ontario and Quebec Saturday, toppling trees and power lines, overturning cars, cutting electricity and even tossing debris through windows. The storms have resulted in at least nine deaths.



www.theweathernetwork.com


----------



## 2manyGuitars (Jul 6, 2009)

tomee2 said:


> I'm not home... Flew out a few hours before it hit, luckily I guess. Wife says power is still out and not expected for a few days. Apparently a huge hydro tower came down but I've not confirmed that yet.


Back on where we are but even just up the road, traffic lights are out.


----------



## Verne (Dec 29, 2018)

Budda said:


> Derecho leaves roughly 1,000 km of damage, fatalities in its wake
> 
> 
> A damaging derecho swept through southern Ontario and Quebec Saturday, toppling trees and power lines, overturning cars, cutting electricity and even tossing debris through windows. The storms have resulted in at least nine deaths.
> ...


Just watched that 15mins ago. It's awful!!! I looked at the wind speed by area, K/W is leading (132kph), Ottawa wasn't even the top of the list, but seems to have gotten the worst of the damage.


----------



## MetalTele79 (Jul 20, 2020)

It was a short storm but it hit hard. My house has been without power for almost 24hrs now with no idea when it will come back. I was supposed to work remotely this morning but had to go into the office instead because of the power. I grabbed the expensive perishables from my fridge (meat and some frozen stuff) and filled the office fridge. I'll grab a few bags of ice on the way home to keep stuff cool in my coolers until the power comes back. Hope it's soon because I need a shower and I can't handle the ice cold water.


----------



## Mark Brown (Jan 4, 2022)

That is one crazy storm track. Hope all you fine folks in Ontario and Quebec come out ok.


----------



## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)

I drove to Ottawa to pick up some small items from Next Gen and Costco. The storm hit when I was driving on the highway. Trees down, so rainy the water 100% blocked the windshield. There were piles of debris blown onto the road. My little car was hydroplaning at times. When I got to Ottawa the power was out, traffic was doing 4 way stops. I phoned Next Gen just before I got there and nobody was answering the phone. When I arrived, the power was out all over, but there was a guy close to his car, with a big tree on top of it. It was the guy working at Next Gen and a giant tree had uprooted and fallen on his car. We talked a bit and looked at his car and he gave me my guitar picks and square plugs. I offered to help but he said he had help on the way. Then I tried to get out of the city and there were trees down, power lines down, most of the stop lights were out, traffic jammed up... Finally I got to Costco in Kanata and of course it was closed. I headed home and the power was out from about 15 minutes after I left until around 11pm. With gas at $2.30 a litre it was a long expensive risky drive to get some guitar picks and square plugs. The end.


----------



## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

We lost power again this morning around 9. Came back on about an hour ago.

Very happy we invested in a small generator a few years ago. Well, “small” for a house. It’s actually quite powerful. We really just power the fridge & freezer. There’s about $1000 worth of beef we raised and butchered this winter. Have to protect that stuff.
We are looking into one of those “whole home” generators though. The weather is only getting crazier. 8 hours was a long, long time to be without hydro yesterday. 

Thankfully though, all safe and sound. Which can’t be said by all.


----------



## Mark Brown (Jan 4, 2022)

SWLABR said:


> We lost power again this morning around 9. Came back on about an hour ago.
> 
> Very happy we invested in a small generator a few years ago. Well, “small” for a house. It’s actually quite powerful. We really just power the fridge & freezer. There’s about $1000 worth of beef we raised and butchered this winter. Have to protect that stuff.
> We are looking into one of those “whole home” generators though. The weather is only getting crazier. 8 hours was a long, long time to be without hydro yesterday.
> ...


Word to the wise, from a guy who is an idiot... If you are going to go whole home, just put a safety switch in front of your main panel and be done with it. It is the easiest, cheapest and arguably the safest way to go. I went with a sub panel off of my main panel because at the time, I was undereducated in the whole affair. Now I have an 8.5K generator running most of my house, but ran out of circuits for the rest. The draw on it is almost never over 3Kw and someday I will get around to finally doing the rest. Problem is I am not a fan of "permits" (yeah yeah, I know) so one of these days when the power is out I am going out to pull the fuses from the power and run me one.

"You might be a red nack....."

For the love of all that is holy though, never back feed your home with a generator, that shit kills people. Yeah, it is mostly safe-ish if you kill the main breaker, but a step down transformer running in reverse can kill those folks out on the lines and for the sake of a 200 dollar panel, that sounds like a shit idea. You just never know what kind of current is bleeding through your breaker.

Fun fact I also learned the hard way.....

To meet code on "safety transfer switch" all you need at minimum is a mechanical means of not allowing both breakers, Line power and Generator power, to be engaged at the same time so a piece of steel and a screw in between works just dandy.


----------



## torndownunit (May 14, 2006)

Griff said:


> Did nobody at your gig receive a severe thunderstorm warning?


I have heard stories of people in locations in the storms path not getting alerts. I got both the phone network/Rogers one and 4 from my weather app (instant weather). But, the Rogers/phone network one came almost 20 minutes after the storm ripped through. Other people have told me the same.

That instant weather app seems to always get the alerts out before anything else I've used. I pay for the pro version because it's saved me some grief on hiking trips.


----------



## Griff (Sep 7, 2016)

I use the WeatherCan app, from Environment Canada. When you set it up for your location, all weather alerts come right up on your phone. Great for thunderstorm season, where things happen quickly. I'd recommend it.


----------



## Okay Player (May 24, 2020)

Didn't get a weather warning. Looked outside and thought "I'll take the pooch for a stroll and heat the storm." By the time she and I get to the bottom of the driveway or was real dark. I said "I'll just let her in the backyard to take care of business and I'll walk her after the storm passes." As things fell apart I called the dog in, she was running in when a chair and a kiddy pool blew into her and she tumbled away with the wind. I called her again and she was able to sprint against the wind and make it inside but it was a scary couple of seconds.

Lost power a little before 4pm yesterday, and still nothing. The City of Ottawa and Hydro One's complete lack of transparency about what's going on regarding power restoration is more than a little infuriating. Apparently we didn't learn anything during the ice storm. Hopefully everyone made it/makes it through safely.


----------



## DrumBob (Aug 17, 2014)

I have been rained on and rained out so many times, I can't count them all. It happened again today. We played a biker bar gig in Sussex, NJ and toward the end of the second set, the clouds rolled in and it started to rain lightly. That was the end. We were covered b a tent, and the rain never got heavy, but we packed up quickly, got paid and got out of there.

There have been times when we got soaked, along with all our gear too, like the outdoor concert at the Jersey Shore, when some "official" and self-appointed "meteorologist" told us, "Oh hell, it's not going to rain, go ahead and play." Fifteen-twenty minutes later, we were soaking wet, and so was all our stuff. What an imbecile.


----------



## DavidChandross (10 mo ago)

Griff said:


> Did nobody at your gig receive a severe thunderstorm warning?


I finished my gig and was starting to pack up when it hit.


----------

