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A tumbleweed tumbled where it shouldn’t have amid today's rain and snowstorm, causing about a third of the City of Powell to briefly lose power.
While the ubiquitous weeds …
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A tumbleweed tumbled where it shouldn’t have amid today's (Thursday's) rain and snowstorm, causing about a third of the City of Powell to briefly lose power.
While the ubiquitous weeds typically blow through town without causing any trouble, this particular plant rolled into the wrong spot at the wrong time.
“With all the moisture, it just got in the right place and … took out the circuit,” said City of Powell Electric Superintendent Steve Franck.
The northern and western portions of the city — including Northwest College, Powell High School and Powell Valley Healthcare — lost power just after 1 p.m. City personnel replaced a blown fuse and reset a recloser (a high voltage electric switch), Franck said, fully restoring service before 1:45 p.m.
While the outage wasn’t necessarily preventable, Franck said the city will review some settings at the electrical substation to try and ensure it doesn’t happen again.
The city’s adventurous squirrels have been known to trigger outages — that’s why the city recently implemented some squirrel deterrents — but today's (Thursday’s) disruption appeared to be the first time a roaming tumbleweed was to blame.
