BOWDEN – Mother Nature is nasty again, especially from Bowden to Olds this morning when 1,700 customers lost their power.
Alana Antonelli, director of corporate communications at FortisAlberta, said ice build-up on a power line near Bowden caused an outage at 9:59 a.m. on Dec. 27 on a line near Bowden, which also impacted Olds to the south.
There was no impact to customers to the north, including in Innisfail.
“With the warmer temperatures there was ice on the line and that can cause them to bounce, which we call galloping and it caused the line to jump off and cause the outage,” said Antonelli. “It is an interesting phenomenon and that is what ended up happening because the ice caused an imbalance on the lines.
“The build-up would have been like you would see when you see frost on the lines,” she added. “It tends to happen when the temperature is hovering around that zero mark and there’s just enough moisture in the air.”
Antonelli said a total of about 1,700 customers were immediately impacted. She added that power to 640 of those impacted was “immediately” restored through automated technology.
As of 11:30 a.m., all but five of the impacted 1,700 customers had their power restored, said Antonelli.
Environment Canada issued freezing rain warnings earlier in the morning. It was noted that if air temperatures are even above zero, some surfaces can still be cold enough for rain to freeze.
In the early afternoon the agency said the freezing rain would slowly move northeastward and out of the province by this evening.
