The combination of heavy snow and high winds caused spotty power outages overnight and into the morning across the Panhandle.

Rural areas have had the most problems, but the biggest outage was in Alliance, where the entire city was without electricity from around 10 pm to about 5 am.

PREMA…the Panhandle Rural Electric Membership Association…includes the rural area around Alliance, and manager Ryan Reiber says outages persisted well into the morning north and west of Alliance, especially in the Berea area.

Hay Springs-based Northwest Rural Public Power District still had outages at midmorning centered from its Scott Substation south of Chadron and extending to Marsland in the southwest corner of Dawes County and east to the Mirage Flats area south of Hay Springs.

In the western Panhandle, Chimney Rock Public Power District suffered an outage about 6:30 Monday night affecting about 60 customers around Bridgeport, Lake Minatare, and Lake Alice. Operations Superintendent Kurt Schimp is asking customers for patience as they work to get repairs completed.

Wheat Belt Public Power District had no widespread outages, but have reports of isolated problems…some of which may require simply resetting breakers to get power back on.

All of the crews across the Panhandle that are out dealing with outages are hampered by poor road conditions and limited visibility, with the continued wind and snow capable of creating still more outages are extending existing outages.

The rural power providers in particular ask anyone seeing downed lines and poles or lines that are drooping or wrapped around each other or something else to contact that utility’s office or after-hours response number.