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900 W. Main St.,
PO Box 690 Grangeville, ID 83530
Phone: 208.983.1200 |
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| Heavy snow knocks out region's power |
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| Several thousand across prairie affected during outage |
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 | | Free Press / Matthew Neal | | Winter fought and lost its final battle last week as a squall brought snow and power outages to the Camas Prairie. By Sunday, March 14, most of the snow had melted away from the lower elevations and — in this view from Graves Creek Road — the sun warmed the prairie to near springtime temperatures. |
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By David Rauzi (editor)
Wet, heavy snow knocked out power to several thousand residences across the Camas Prairie region for more than two hours last Saturday morning, March 13.
According to Avista, 3,958 customers in and around Grangeville and Cottonwood lost power starting at 1:33 a.m. resulting from a transmission line problem due to a heavy snow load. Customers in Kamiah and Kooskia were affected for several minutes during the outage, which also impacted a total 1,852 patrons of Idaho County Light and Power Cooperative who are served through the East Grangeville and Cottonwood substations.
Power to approximately 820 customers was restored around 2:40 a.m., and the remainder regained service at 3:45 a.m.
"The outage was caused by uneven snow unloading off of the power lines," according to Jeff Scott, Grangeville construction manager. "The lines ended up getting wrapped around each other when the snow suddenly unloaded off the lines and caused them to get tangled together."
Snowfall started the Friday evening prior, March 12, with reports of seven inches of heavy snow in the Grangeville area by that Saturday morning. Cottonwood reported receiving two inches, however, strong winds resulted in whiteout conditions.
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