Watch CBS News

Heavy Snow Causes Power Problems In Metro Area

DENVER (CBS4) – Heavy, wet snow caused power problems in the Denver metro area Thursday morning.

Power was lost for residents in the area of 13th Avenue and High Street in Denver. Xcel Energy crews blamed the outage on a fallen tree limb. Nearly seven blocks were affected for several hours. The power was restored just before noon.

POWER OUTAGE 9TH ELM.Consol
An Xcel Energy worker at the site of a broken power pole on Thursday (credit: CBS)

Officials with Xcel said because of the snow they experienced high outages in the Denver metro area, but those were limited to the overnight hours between midnight and 3 a.m.

As of 10:30 a.m. on Thursday Xcel reported approximately 600 homes without power in the Boulder area. They've had a group of workers from Denver that shifted to that Boulder area to help those crews get power back up and running.

Officials with Xcel say they have measures in place when they know storms bringing heavy snow are coming, but acknowledge the wet snow can pose challenges.

"When you have wet, heavy snow, you can expect that there will be vegetation issues; and I mean branches falling and trees falling and those kinds of things are what we face under these circumstances," Xcel Energy Spokesman Gabriel Romero said. "But again, we've been relatively lucky in this case. We have not sustained too many outages, but there's been an effect on the system."

For those who are away from home there's a website to check to see if the power is on in their neighborhood. Visit a special section of xcelenergy.com to view a map of outages.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.