Brrrr ^ 2

Yesterday just was not fun.  All of the freezing rain from the day before and the snow in the morning caused problems all over the city.  From various reports, have of Springfield didn’t have power.  Our neighborhood was fine, but only our house had no natural gas.  I didn’t know it was possible for the cold weather to impact the gas line coming into the house…

I stayed home because of the weather and worked on my computer.  At around 11am I thought to myself that it felt a little too chilly inside so I decided to turn on the gas fireplace.  The pilot light was out, surely just blown out by a draft or something.  After 20 seconds of not being able to light it, I went over to the stove and discovered no gas was there either.  I called the gas company and reported it, they responded saying they’d send someone out.

Sometime around 2 I went outside to look at the gas meter (no clue what I expected to find, but I went anyway).  I could hear the gas “hiss” on the neighbor’s meter but mine was silent.  It was also completely covered by a hill of ice and snow.  Not wanting to mess anything up, I decided to just wait for Ameren to show up.

At around 6pm, after a day of a chilly house, they showed up.  I chatted with the guys and they said they had been working on gas problems all day, which suprised me.  I watched as they wiped off the gas meter and then knocked all the ice off the regulator with a wrench.  Almost immediately you could hear the gas flowing again.  They stayed around and checked our furnace and made sure everything was flowing as it should before taking off.  Thanks AmerenCilco for keeping us warm!