In case you are living under a rock and haven't heard, a failure in the northeast U.S. power grid caused power outages in parts of NY, PA, CT, NJ, OH, MI, and Ontario, Canada. Here, west of Detroit, power went out along with everyone else around 4:10pm ET and just came back up ~8am. There are still many areas without power. Coverage of the power outages can be found in many of the major news websites.
For most of the night, I kept tabs on the outage via portable radio and everyone was offering up their speculation for the cause of the power grid failure. Officials claim they had no explanation and it may take an investigation for a cause, but curiously, President Bush quickly assured the outage was not a terrorist act. There were unsubstantiated reports of a lightning strike at a power plant, fire at a plant, and even someone offered up the MSBlast worm for bringing the grid down. There was also some extreme speculation on late night AM radio that an electro-magnetic pulse, or uber-secret experimentation was to blame.
No matter what the cause, there appears to have been calm in the areas without power. Other than a couple random reports of looting in the Detroit area, there was little problem in the notorious Motor City. The University of Michigan hospital was up and running quickly after the outage, and they attributed to contingency plans drafted during the Y2K scare for keeping things running. Even with power coming back up in isolated areas, there are still reports that complete restoration of power to affected areas may not occur until Sunday. There was one benefit to the power outage to people across the northeast. Many stargazers (including me) were able to hop outside and view the night sky without the effects of the normal light pollution.
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