Wind blows out power before sunrise in Santa Clara, other local areas

ST. GEORGE — Windy conditions early Monday caused all of Santa Clara and parts of Ivins and St. George to be without power for an hour and a half. And a high wind warning remains in effect for much of the day. 

Photo by jjgarcia03/iStock/Getty Images Plus, St. George News

The National Weather Service issued the high wind warning for lower Washington County at 3:30 a.m. and said to secure loose objects and to expect power outages. And a power outage is just what happened in all of Santa Clara and other locations. 

“We were without power for an hour and a half – the whole city,” said Gary Hall, the power director for Santa Clara. 

Hall said the outage, which lasted from around 4:30-6 a.m., was triggered by debris that hit a transmission line. The line itself wasn’t damaged, but Hall said as a safety precaution the transmission is shut off after power is cycled three times and an obstruction is detected, preventing additional damage to the entire system. 

“It tripped off a breaker in the Snow Canyon substation of St. George. They feed us. Something must have blown up in the transmission line,” Hall said. “If it blew something into the power line, it must have cleared because they were able to manually turn it back on.”

In a file photo, Santa Clara Power Director Gary Hall speaks to the Santa Clara City Council, Santa Clara, Utah, Jan. 26, 2022 | Photo by Chris Reed, St. George News

Traffic lights were out in Santa Clara and parts of Ivins and police officers moved in for traffic control in the early morning hours. Branches of trees littered the roads and blown-up dust as well as flying refuse out of trash bins out for pickup further reduced visibility. 

Beyond the Santa Clara-Ivins area, Rocky Mountain Power reported as of 8 a.m., 39 customers in the Dammeron Valley remained without power and eight addresses were without power in Leeds.

The weather service said the Interstate 15 corridor between Pintura and Leeds will continue to see gusts up to 70 mph with sustained winds between 25 and 35 mph throughout Monday. 

The advisory added that St. George proper will see less windy conditions, with maximum gusts at 35 mph.

True to form, while some areas of lower Washington County were battening down the hatches, others were experiencing no wind whatsoever. While gusts could be felt near Dixie State, on the other side of Black Hill the air was still at Dixie and Sunset and in the Tonaquint area.

St. George News reporter Jessi Bang contributed to this story.

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2022, all rights reserved.

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