Awoke this morning to the whine of our generator powering the house. We apparently lost power sometime in the wee morning hours and the Guardian generator did its job, starting on its own and restoring electricity.
This makes the fourth extended power outage in our area in the past year, including the storm earlier this year that kept our generator humming for 96 hours.
According to a 6:14 a.m. story on The Roanoke Times web site:
6,179 customers in Southwest Virginia are without power this morning, according to Appalachian Power.
They represent approximately 1.2 percent of the 521,253 customers in the six counties affected.
AEP puts the total at 6,203. The outage covers Bland, Floyd, Montgomery, Patrick, Pulaski and Wythe counties. According to the AEP power outage section on their web site we are among 512 customers without power in Floyd County.
Hard to know more. Only Channel 7 has a local Sunday morning newscast and it doesn’t come on unitl 8. Our local television stations never heard of the concept of expanding coverage during critical weather times.
UPDATE: 6:50 a.m. Floyd County outage up one to 513. Regional totals down to 5,012.
UPDATE: 7:55 a.m. Regional totals up to 5,880. Floyd County up to 527.
UPDATE: 8:00 a.m. The storm may be over but power outage totals are heading up, not down. Regional totals now at 7,601. Floyd up to 530.
UPDATE: 10:39 a.m. Floyd power outages now at 679. Regional total: 7,846.
UPDATE: 4:00 p.m. Floyd power outages now at 458. Regional total: 7,336. Our power still out so we have electricity courtesy of Guardian, not AEP.
UPDATE: 6:50 p.m. Floyd County power outages now at 243 (including Chateau Thompson). Southwestern Virginia at 3,361,
We didn’t get any ice accumulation over here last night on the other side of the Blue Ridge in Franklin County, but the wind gusts today (Sunday) are flirting with 50mph and seem to be strengthening. I suspect your tally of customers without power in Floyd will be ramping up if you’re getting these gusts also!
Sean
I get as irritated as anyone in the county with extended outages, but in this particular case, I have to give the AEP crew credit for a job well done. Our power went down at 2AM Sunday morning; a huge tree fell across Little River along River Ridge Rd and took a pole and the line with it. The crew, 4 or 5 trucks as well as the Asplundh guys, was there in the morning and worked through the afternoon and evening, in bitter cold and dangerous winds. Power was restored at 9PM, two hours before the estimated time provided by a late morning phone call to AEP.
AEP now claims there are more homes without power in Floyd than at this time on Sunday. High winds and ice storms are a fact of life in this area and they have failed to prepare for either.