Sidney Area Hit with High Wind, Little Snow

While North Platte to Lincoln was shut down due to blizzard conditions Thursday, Sidney experienced high wind, light snow and cold.

The Wheat Belt Public Power District reported Thursday morning widespread outages due to high wind and ice. At early afternoon, crews were still busy restoring outages west of the Dalton/Gurley area and northeast to Chappell. As of 3:45 p.m., crews were still battling high winds in an effort to restore power.

Wheat Belt officials said Friday outages began in the late afternoon of Wednesday, Dec. 26, continuing through most of Thursday, Dec. 27. Crews were on the road between 5:30 and 6 p.m. Wheat Belt crews were able to restore power to most of its customers once the wind subsided Thursday evening. Wheat Belt also assisted PREMA, based in Alliance, and Midwest based in Grant.

“We were thankful that we didn’t also have the blizzard conditions that many rural electrics (power providers) faced in the eastern part of the state,” said Wheat Belt Business Manager Pam Wieser.

Wheat Belt Public Power provides electricity to most of Cheyenne County, much of Morrill and Garden Counties, and Deuel County totaling about 3,600 square miles. As of the end of 2017, Wheat Belt had 158 miles of transmission line and 2,203 miles of overhead distribution lines with another 160 miles of underground distribution lines.

High West Energy, supplier of electric power for western Cheyenne County and west into Wyoming received several reports of outages west of Sidney to the Wyoming state line Thursday.

The Nebraska State Patrol Wednesday urged drivers to be prepared for winter weather conditions as storm warnings were posted for for the state.

Communications and Marketing Manager Jim East said High West had about 3,000 Nebraska customers without power. He said the average outage was three hours. The majority of High West outages were restored by 8 p.m. Thursday.

“The first reported outage came in at 2:28 a.m.,” East said. “We had crews from Potter responding by 3 a.m. They were joined by crews from Pine Bluffs before 6 a.m.”

East said crews battled high wind and cold through the day.

“The bitter cold and high winds created constant challenges for us and led to major outages in Nebraska, and scattered outages in Wyoming and Colorado. Our guys worked tirelessly, from before the sun came up Thursday morning until 9 p.m., that night to repair the damage and restore power to our members,” he said.

At 10:17 a.m. Thursday, the NSP announced that westbound Interstate 80 was closed at mile marker 237. Earlier that morning, the NSP announced I-80 closed between North Platte and Lexington as a result of multiple accidents and white-out conditions. Highway 30 in the area was also closed. The State Patrol later announced I-80 Westbound closed from North Platte to Grand Island

The National Weather Service out of Cheyenne, Wyo., reported some light snow over the Nebraska Panhandle Thursday. Wind was reported gusting at 43 mph with the windchill at 6 degrees Fahrenheit. Thursday was predicted to have flurries before noon with temperatures fall to the lows 20s by 5 p.m.

Friday was predicted to reach a high of 23, Saturday 33 and Sunday 46. Wind chills were five below to five above zero with north northwest winds of 5 to 15 mph.

Cheyenne County, however, received the wind and cold temperatures with very little snow.

The Nebraska State Patrol reported most of the Panhandle roads and highways remained in normal condition. Central roads just east of the Panhandle were partially snow-covered and much of Central Nebraska roads from north to south were snow covered.