OTTUMWA —
Snow is bad enough. But when you add in strong winds, things start coming down. For some southeast Iowa residents, those things were power lines.
Alliant Energy was reporting about 1,200 Wapello County customers without power at 11 a.m. Thursday. The number on their website a half-hour later was a bit different: 530.
At issue are "galloping power lines;" lines that sway in unusually large waves that can stress or break components. If the lines come too close to one another, or to other objects, they can even have electrical arcs jump between them. Wind is always an issue when that happens and snow or ice can make things worse.
Here is a listing of Alliant Energy's outages as listed at 11:30 a.m. on the company's website. Below that is a video of galloping power lines.
Appanoose County 2
Davis County 0
Jefferson County 0
Keokuk County 0
Mahaska County 107
Marion County 0
Monroe County 7
Van Buren County 410
Wapello County 530
