UPDATED: Tuesday, November 29th, 2022
(Undated) -- Freezing precipitation combined with high winds caused calamity for KMAland electrical services Tuesday.
Thousands of MidAmerican Energy customers in southwest Iowa and southeast Nebraska residents covered by Omaha Public Power District lost power for several hours. About 13,500 MidAmerican customers were without electricity at the peak of the outages. MidAmerican Energy Spokesman Geoff Greenwood tells KMA News a galloping effect caused most of the outages.
"When there's freezing rain, or rain that freezes on overhead power lines, it sort of changes the air pattern as winds blow onto the lines, or blow through the lines," said Greenwood. "The lines start to bounce a little bit, then bounce even more, and bounce even more, and that's what we call galloping. And, that's when we have outages."
Greenwood says about 4,000 customers in Shenandoah, alone, lost power. He says the outages were off-and-on in some instances.
"We had several outages that were only a few minutes in duration," he said. "So, it may be three, four, five minutes at a time when power went out, and then back on again. This was largely due to galloping overhead lines. We had crews in the area that could observe the galloping going on, and they could see what was happening. But, when that starts to occur, there's not a lot they can do until the wind starts to subside."
He adds the weather caused problems for MidAmerican's entire system--not just the power lines.
"There is an area not in Shenandoah where the combinations of the winds and the freezing rain actually broke an overhead pole--a transmission pole--and that will have to be repaired," said Greenwood. "In other cases, a line's insulator may have broken, and in other cases, there's nothing broken. It's just that the galloping caused a circuit interruption, and then it stopped, and the circuit restored itself, and the customers are back on."
Based on information from MidAmerican Energy, Mills County Emergency Management Coordinator Gabe Barney says roughly 10% of the county's residents lost power late Tuesday morning-early Tuesday afternoon.
"Kind of the big hits, it seems, happened further east of here (Glenwood)," said Barney. "A little bit in Glenwood. They had to let out a couple of schools early, just because they don't have power. Then, you've got buses on the roads going when it's a little bit icy out and everything, too. So, it's been a little bit dangerous conditions for here."
Barney says the precipitation started as a light rain, which then froze as the temperature dropped through the day.
"After the first light rain initially froze," he said, "we started seeing a little bit more freezing rain and sleet, which started to cause some buildup. So, that's what we're thinking a lot of where those power outages were coming from--the weight of the power lines. That's from our guesses, at least."
MidAmerican's outage map showed electricity was restored to most Mills County customers by 2 p.m. By that same time, power was back to almost all Montgomery County residents. Montgomery County Emergency Management Coordinator Brian Hamman says Tuesday's weather is a good reminder to prepare for outages with other future weather events.
"Winter is upon us," said Hamman. "Snow will be on the ground before too long. Hopefully, we can get some moisture, but it's just a good refresher to everyone to keep it in the back of their minds when weather happens to have extra batteries, blankets, candles, whatever it may be to get you through in any or all power outages that occur."
By late Tuesday afternoon, most of the remaining outages were located in Pottawattamie County. However, Greenwood warned other outages were still possible into the evening hours.
The MidAmerican outage map is available here.
A link to the OPPD outage map is included here.
ORIGINAL STORY: Tuesday, November 29th, 2022 11:12 a.m.
(Omaha-Council Bluffs) -- Power outages are mounting in KMAland due to inclement weather.
MidAmerican Energy reported more than 3,500 customers without power in southwest Iowa as of 11 a.m. Tuesday, including 982 customers in Fremont County, alone. Mills County is also reporting another 329 customers without electricity. Omaha Public Power District also reports extensive power outages in southeast Nebraska, including more than 2,000 in both Sarpy and Cass counties.
You can check the MidAmerican outage map here.
The OPPD outage map is available here.
