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By Ron Fitzwater
The early morning hours of New Year's Eve 2008 hit the High
Country, and especially Ashe County, with several hours of heavy,
sustained winds and hurricane force gusts that knocked limbs
from trees, tore shingles and patches of tar roofing from downtown
West Jefferson buildings and left several hundred Blue Ridge
Electric members in the dark.
The cause of all the trouble was the convergence of two weather
systems that came together over the High Country.
Ken Kostura, meteorologist for the National Weather Service's
Blacksburg, Va., weather station, explained the event.
"Basically, we were caught between two systems, a low
pressure center that cut to our north, and a cold front that
moved through; the winds from the northwest were squeezed between
them and strengthened.
"Once you get a tight gradient between two systems, you
tend to get stronger winds. That's what happened."
According to Kostura, at any given time during the event the
winds were "blowing at sustained speeds of 20, 30 and even
as high as 50 mph at certain times of the day.
"Most of the reports that we received throughout our
coverage area came during the morning hours Wednesday, but reports
continued to trickle in during the entire day," Kostura
said. Those reports usually came after a significant gust was
registered at one of the monitoring points used by the weather
station.
One such report came in at 3:43 a.m. from the top of Mount
Jefferson, when a gust of 70 mph was recorded.
"That looks to be the highest one reported," Kostura
said adding, "There were reports of 60 mph gusts in Sparta
and from our spotter in Alleghany County. We also had a report
from Boone of a gust clocked at 62 mph just after 9 a.m.
"Although we generally get most of our winds in the fall,
we can and do get high winds into the winter, so a wind event
isn't uncommon for us, especially in the higher terrains. You
just need the right components of wind and higher elevations,"
said Kostura.
The high winds caused more inconveniences than serious problems,
according to Ashe County Sheriff James Williams.
"We really didn't have any problems reported to us. The
communications center was very busy with calls coming in for
downed trees and such, but nothing major on our end."
County Manager Dan McMillan also reported that there were
no major problems that he was aware of as a result of the event.
Blue Ridge Electric Public Relations Director Renée
Whitener said that throughout the Blue Ridge Service area there
were 1,559 members who lost power and that most of the outages
lasted for around 30 minutes, occurring at different times throughout
the day due to the high sustained winds and heavy gusts.
Whitener said that the outages started about 4 a.m. and that
Ashe County was the hardest hit with 792 outages.
"31 different locations which supply 10 to 12 members
each were affected, including two broken poles, with the worst
of the outages affecting 260 people in the Cranberry Creek area
who were without power for about five hours due to a breaker
outage," Whitener said.
The total number of outages, according to Whitener, was much
lower than they could have been, but because of BRE's meticulous
attention to preventative maintenance the crews were able to
have most members' power back on by 4 p.m.
In addition to the 792 members in Ashe County, members affected
across the region were: 212 in Watauga County, 527 Alleghany
County and 28 in Caldwell County.
Whitener said that BRE is very proud of their line crews and
how hard they work, sometimes in unpleasant and even dangerous
weather conditions, and that BRE is among the best in the country
for reliability.
"We are really proud of our linemen. When we get a call
for an outage, our linemen are jumping up sometimes out of bed
and getting the power back on.
"They do it so quickly because we don't want our members
to be without power any longer than they need to be, especially
in this cold weather," she said.
Should you experience an outage due to weather or any other
reason, call the BRE Powerline at (800) 448-2383.
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