Storm Drops a Foot of Snow on High Country; 6,000 Without Power

By Ron Fitzwater

A wintry mix of rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow moved into the High Country late Sunday afternoon, and then turned completely to snow during the overnight hours with a few pockets of sleet falling in spots. The snow was heavy at times, especially in areas along the crest of the Blue Ridge from Virginia east to Lynchburg, and here in the High Country. In these regions, snowfall amounts in the eight to 10-inch range were the average with some areas in Ashe and Watauga Counties reporting amounts up to 12 inches.

Elsewhere, snowfall amounts were in the four to six-inch range. As of 5 a.m. Monday, temperatures in the mountains fell into the teens and low to mid-20s east of the Blue Ridge, with winds coming from the north-west from 15 to 20 mph with gusts around 30 mph.

The snow slowly stopped moving from south to north during the early morning hours of Monday with total snow accumulations averaging four to eight inches along and east of the Blue Ridge. Skies cleared, but winds remained brisk out of the northwest with morning low temperatures from the teens west to the 20s east. Afternoon highs varied from the 20s west to the lower and mid 30s east and overnight temperatures dropped to -10 with the wind-chill.

The storm front brought with it the very unwelcome occurrence of power outages and Blue Ridge Electric linemen went immediately to work to get service reestablished.

As of 5:30 p.m. Sunday evening, linemen had responded to reports of 267 members experiencing power out-ages across the service area.

As of 10 p.m. Sunday night, 5,000 members were affected by the outage in the substation serving the Sher-wood community. Prior to that outage, a total of 1,000 members had been affected by the power interrup-tion. Outages began around 2 p.m. Sunday and had crews working in at least 41 different locations to repair damages and restore power.

By 5:30 a.m. Monday, morning, line technicians had restored power outages to approximately 6,000 mem-bers of the cooperative with all but 70 Watauga County members restored with power after outages, which included a substation outage affecting 5,000 people in the Sherwood community that began at 10 p.m.

In Ashe County, where the majority of the outages occurred, line technicians had all but 80 people restored with power as of early Monday. These members were located primarily in the Deep Gap area.

In Alleghany County, all outages were restored by 3:15 a.m., and in Caldwell County, very few outages oc-curred during the storm and none were in effect Monday morning.

By 10 a.m. Monday full power restoration was completed and crews were assisting sister cooperative Energy United to restore power to members of the Statesville-based cooperative.

Heavy, wet snow pulling down power lines caused the majority of the outages. When this situation occurs, power lines can sag into each other, causing the power to kick off, or it can pull down the lines to a breaking point. Equipment in substations can also be affected. When power is restored, it must be done so in phases to certain line sections at a time in order to safely handle the load created by the demand of heating systems and other appliances and electrical equipment, and to avoid another outage.