Another batch of severe thunderstorms is headed for Schloss Bodissey. I can hear the thunder booming right now.

If everything grinds to a halt here this evening, you’ll know why.

Another storm is here. Thunder and lightning and rain, with a Severe Thunderstorm Watch called by the National Weather Service.

You all know the drill by now.

The weather here at Schloss Bodissey has been stifling: extremely hot and humid. And now another line of thunderstorms is headed this way. I can’t hear the thunder yet, but the lights have begun to flicker occasionally, so trouble can’t be too far away.

Once again: if this site becomes mysteriously inactive, you’ll know why. If the phone company maintains its usual standards, the internet may go out for a couple of days — it’s hard to predict.

Or everything may be fine. You never can tell.

A line of strong thunderstorms is approaching and will soon be over Schloss Bodissey. The rain has started, and the thunderclaps are getting louder and louder.

It shouldn’t be enough to take out my internet connection, but with the Thoroughly Modern Phone Company you never can tell.

This is just FYI. If all activity ceases here later this evening, you’ll know why.

I went into town yesterday afternoon to do some grocery shopping, and while I was gone a line of thunderstorms came through the area. I assume they were part of the trailing edge of Hurricane Beryl, which had so much fun in the Caribbean earlier this month and is now disappearing into Ontario as a diffuse low-pressure system.

I got home to Schloss Bodissey just as the storm broke, and was barely able to get the groceries into the house before the rain started bucketing down. The storm was dramatic, with plenty of thunder and lightning, but no significant wind — just a welcome two inches of rain. The electricity never went out. I checked the phone when I came in, and it was still on.

However, after I put the groceries away, when I sat down at the computer to resume work, I discovered that the internet was out. All that lightning and thunder must have scared away the demons that run the local server.

It is often the case that the internet comes back on overnight without my needing to take action. Since making a tech support call to the phone company is a pain in the [nether orifice], I decided to wait until morning, and went to bed.

When I got up this morning, the light on the modem was still red. I fortified myself with breakfast and coffee and began the ordeal of calling tech support. It’s a grueling process — you have to go through a seemingly endless series of robot menus, some of which take touch-tone inputs, while others require voice. After responding to all the standard questions about power-cycling the modem and so on, I was finally transferred to a human being. In this case I was very fortunate to be referred to Pedro rather than Jamsheed — the Latino support people are much easier to understand than the guys with thick Bangladesh accents.

After talking to the tech I had to endure waiting on hold repeatedly while being forced to listen to horrible music. That took about forty-five excruciating minutes. Finally he told me that the soonest he could send a technician out would be tomorrow between 8am and 5pm.

Which is ridiculous, because all they have to do is send a guy out to reboot the rain-soaked server. But there’s nothing a mere customer can do. They don’t care. They don’t have to care. They’re the phone company.

And then, mirabile dictu, the internet mysteriously returned about two hours after I got off the phone. You never can tell.

I’m way behind in everything, obviously. I’ll read all the email and put up a bunch of posts, and there will be a news feed before midnight.

Unless another storm comes through.

It was beastly hot earlier in the day, but now the sky has grown ominously dark. There are faint rumbles of thunder, and rain is falling steadily, although not all that hard. Based on the radar map, there are at least two waves of storms coming through.

Knowing the phone company the way I do, I have my doubts that the internet will remain on the whole time — after all, there’s a service interruption whenever a bluebird perches on the server box, or a cow scratches her back against it, so a real slam-bang storm is bound to knock it out.

It’s also possible that the electricity will go off, but the electric co-op is more reliable than the phone company. So we’ll see.

Anyway, if the site goes dead and comments stop getting approved, you’ll know why.

The rain is welcome — we’ve been in a severe drought for a month — but I could do without all the boom and bang.

The National Weather Service forecast for Saturday here at Schloss Bodissey includes a “winter weather advisory”: we are to expect “mixed precipitation”, with “snow accumulations of up to one inch and ice accumulations of one-tenth to two-tenths of an inch.”

Furthermore, “Precipitation is expected to begin as a mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain between 4 and 7 AM, then change to mostly freezing rain between 7 AM and 10 AM. Precipitation may mix with or change to rain by late afternoon, before ending during the early evening.”

It doesn’t sound serious enough to cause a power outage, but you never can tell. So if Saturday evening comes along and this is still the top post, and comments aren’t being approved, you’ll know why. Just assume that I am sitting here drinking wine (an Alvarez de Toledo Mencia, probably) by candlelight, keeping the temperature in the house above freezing by using the propane range in the kitchen…

Dymphna’s stove

Update 1:00pm EST: There was a little freezing rain, nothing significant, before I got up this morning. Since then it’s pretty much just been rain. It’s raining hard now, but not much ice on the trees. So it looks like the electricity may stay on, at least for the time being.

If you live on the East Coast, you’ve probably heard about Tropical Storm Ophelia, which came up through the Carolinas and is now in the process of looping through Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey.

The real action is pretty far away from Schloss Bodissey, but still, we’re getting a lot of rain, and some gusty winds, so anything is possible. If the lights go dark at Gates of Vienna tonight, that’s almost certainly the reason.

I went out late this afternoon and didn’t see any trees or big branches down, so I’m not really worried. On the other hand, the phone company’s antiquated equipment may decide that this is a good time to crap out. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Long-time readers are aware of my persistent issues with phone and internet connectivity. The phone system out here in the Far Boondocks is roughly equivalent to two tin cans connected by a piece of string. It doesn’t take much stress on that string to zap my internet connection.

Last Friday, right after I finished moderating the comments that had come in overnight, my phone and Internet went out. Clear blue sky, no wind, beautiful day — and the phone went out, just like that.

I’ve learned from experience that when the phone goes out on a Friday, I can expect it to stay off all weekend. The phone company doesn’t send technicians out here to fix outages in their off hours. Repairs are scheduled for normal work hours, Monday through Friday. So if the phone goes out on Tuesday, it might be fixed on Wednesday, if I’m lucky. But if it goes out on Friday, I can forget about any repairs over the weekend.

As it happened, Saturday was the day of the memorial service for my very good friend who died last month (see “Thanatopsis”, August 6). The future Baron came down for the weekend so that he could attend it. Before he left yesterday, I had him come with me while I drove us to where there was a cell phone signal, about eight miles from here, and used his phone to call tech support in Bangladesh. After going through interminable touch-tone menus, and listening to horrible music while on hold, I finally got to talk to a personable young lady with a thick Bengali accent. She apologized profusely for the difficulties I was having, then made me listen to the horrible music for a while longer while she looked into the situation. When she returned, she told me that there was an outage in my area, and there was no estimated time for the repairs to be completed.

I knew ahead of time that she would say that, because that’s the way it always goes. But it’s important to go through the forms, just for propriety’s sake, and set up a trouble ticket.

I also knew that the phone would come back on today, because it always happens that way. The technician comes to work on Monday morning and looks at his trouble tickets while he drinks a cup of coffee. Then he gets in his panel truck and comes out here to Eerie Hollow to reconnect the string to the tin can.

It had been more than a month since the previous outage, which was a pretty long run. Let’s see how long it takes before the next one.

Generally speaking, if you see me disappear for a weekend without any advance warning, you can assume there’s been an outage like this one.

Update: The storm seems to have passed through. It was loud, but not all that violent. There was no hail, at least not here at Schloss Bodissey.

Central Virginia is currently under a severe thunderstorm warning, and I can already hear the thunder and see the lightning. The storm is rapidly approaching, and we may be in for hail and high winds.

If Gates of Vienna stops being updated after this post, you’ll know why.