This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Power crews worked through the night Friday to restore electricity to thousands of Wasatch Front residents who were left in the dark during severe afternoon thunderstorms.
The largest outages began just after 5:40 p.m. Friday and affected the Capitol Hill and Federal Heights neighborhoods in Salt Lake City. Rocky Mountain Power spokeswoman Margaret Ohler said Saturday that the outages were related to the windy weather.
More than 7,000 people were without power as a result of the outages. Ohler said crews restored power to about half of those people about two hours later, at 7:44 p.m. By 2:10 a.m., the remaining customers also had electricity flowing again.
The wind also caused a power outage in Ogden that began about 5:40 p.m. Ohler said 165 Ogden customers were without power until 7:03 p.m. In West Valley City, wind left 11 customers without electricity from about 5:40 p.m. until just after 7 a.m. Saturday. Two small communities in Box Elder County — Thatcher and Garland — also experienced outages that began just after 5:30 p.m. Friday. Those outages affected nearly 300 customers between the two communities. Crews restored power to Garland by 9:43 p.m. and to Thatcher by 11:02 p.m.
In South Jordan, a vehicle accident that was unrelated to the weather knocked out power for about 1,500 people at 9:42 p.m. The outage continued until just after midnight.
Ohler described the weather-related outages as fairly typical during and after a gusty storm. She also said Rocky Mountain Power has crews on duty at all times to fix any problems, though she advised homeowners to keep trees away from power lines.
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