CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — Summer storms continue to crop up–making power outages a regular occurrence this time of year.
First Energy Spokesman Todd Myers said it may have started a little earlier this year, but that these persistent storms require their attention.
“It just seems to be the weather pattern that we’ve been in lately where we get this cold fronts coming through and some fairly significant thunderstorms are coming through and causing significant damage,” he said.
As we delve deeper into the summer months, the storms are going to be more frequent. On days of bad storms, like this past Father’s Day, crews from Mon Power often work 16 hour days.
“We do work around the clock to get this outages repaired,” said Myers.
Myers said they’re already preparing for the possibility of further inclement weather creating outages on Thursday.
“It’s something that we contend with, and we’ll work around the clock and address it,” he said.
The biggest concern is always with the distribution network–power lines that could be hit by trees after heavy winds. Mon Power is spending $72 million in 2014 on tree trimming.
“We do that precisely for this kind of weather,” Myers said. “We cannot prevent some outages from occurring. It just won’t happen unless we cut such a wide strip of vegetation and trees that nothing can possibly come in contact with the line, and we can’t do that.”
Another concern is heavy saturation of rain. Myers said those trees become fodder for the wind when they’ve dealt with heavy rain.
“It doesn’t take much wind–and we’re going wind with these storms–to begin to push over trees when their roots are all saturated and everything’s a swampy marsh,” he said.
Myers said that he feels fortunate that the storms haven’t been out-of-the-ordinary–citing the damage caused by the derecho during the summer of 2012.
“What we’re having right now–even though it’s keeping us busy and unfortunately it’s inconvenient to customers–we know that,” he said. “But these are, what I would call your typical garden variety storms that we experience in the summer time.”
You can check outage information and report outages by going to First Energy’s website.