Electric Co-op Today

High winds, heavy rains, tornadoes and snow caused outages in several states and kept co-op lineworkers busy restoring power to consumer-members Oct. 26-27. A tornado damaged the headquarters of an Indiana co-op.

A woman surveys tornado at a house in Randolph County, Indiana following a storm that some have described as an inland hurricane Oct. 26, 2010. (Photo By: Associated Press/The Star Press, Chris Bergin)

The severe weather was spawned by a massive storm system that roared through the Mississippi River Valley from the High Plains to Dixie early Oct. 26 before sweeping eastward toward the Mid-Atlantic coast the following day.

“It was fierce, with howling winds in excess of 65 miles per hour and heavy rain making it difficult to drive,” said Tracie Trent, communications coordinator of the Indiana Statewide Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives.

Before the storm moved out of the Hoosier State, nearly 49,000 co-op consumer-members would temporarily lose electric power. One co-op, Wabash County Rural Electric Membership Corp., suffered tornado damage at its Wabash headquarters.

“They have quite a bit of damage to their lines and system as well as their building,” said Trent. The statewide association dispatched four men, two trucks and a trailer as mutual aid to help the co-op restore service to about 600 consumer-members.

Power outages related to the storm system were also reported in Ohio, Tennessee, North Carolina and several other states. Over a two-day period, the National Weather Service issued severe weather advisories for parts of 36 states.

Georgia was among the other states affected by the storm system. “In a 36-hour timeframe we experienced nearly two dozen broken poles ranging from three-phase to single-phase,” said Jeff Brown, director of operations for North Georgia Electric Membership Corp.

The Dalton–based co-op has restored service to nearly 5,000 of its consumer-members who lost power, said Brown. “It could have been much worse, due to the tremendous number of trees that had fallen throughout our service territory.”

While the leading edge of the storm spawned tornadoes and gale force winds across the Midwest Oct. 26, the storm brought much colder temperatures to parts of the High Plains and Southwest. Parts of Colorado, the Dakotas, Wisconsin and Minnesota received measurable snowfall the next day.

“High winds and snow build up have been snapping power lines in some areas,” said Tami Zaun, public relations coordinator for Lake Country Power. The Grand Rapids, Minn.-based co-op reported 1,400 members without service Oct. 27, down from a peak of 9,000 on Oct. 26.

Other co-ops in the Upper Midwest reported similar problems.

“We had scattered outages Tuesday and the winds have remained high so we’ve had sporadic problems today,” Zak Schneider, communications specialist for Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric Association, told ECT.coop Oct. 27. “The most we’ve had out at any one time was about 500 consumer-members.”

Tags: Power Outages, Response, Weather