Snow causes outages across Northern Missouri
Heavy, wet snow and high winds across northern Missouri caused outages for approximately 16,000 electric cooperative members Tuesday. Hardest hit service areas included Macon Electric Cooperative, Lewis County Rural Electric Cooperative, Tri-County Electric Cooperatives and Missouri Rural Electric Cooperative which all experienced significant outages on Tuesday.
All four cooperatives asked for help through the Mutual Assistance Program coordinated by the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives in Jefferson City. Electric cooperatives out of harm’s way sent 12 additional linemen to Macon Electric and 8 linemen to assist Lewis County, 12 to help Tri-County and 2 to help Missouri Rural in an assistance program that dates to 1948.
Those additional workers are coming from Three Rivers Electric Cooperative, Linn; Callaway Electric, Fulton; Boone Electric, Columbia; Co-Mo Connect Electric Cooperative, Tipton; Cuivre River Electric Cooperative, Troy and Howard Electric, Fayette. Other co-ops in the outage area are assessing the situation and additional crews are ready should they be needed.
Line workers around the affected areas worked all night to stay ahead of the outages. The difficulty of their work was compounded by the constantly falling snow and high winds, which made driving treacherous with slick roads and fallen trees.
Other areas seeing major outages included United Electric, Maryville, and Grundy County Electric, Trenton.
The first major winter storm of the year dumped heavy snow in a line extending from the Missouri River at St. Joseph to the Mississippi River at Hannibal. The outages for the most part were caused by trees located out of the right of way falling into lines, heavy snow and high winds. Crews will continue working as quickly as safely possible until all power is restored.
