Poor visibility hampers work to restore power in area

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Logan C. Adams / The Sun A woman walks around the corner from First Street onto First Avenue Monday afternoon in Jamestown during windy conditions

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Sometime between 10 and 11 a.m. Monday, the wind hit a gust of 53 miles per hour at Jamestown, the National Weather Service reported.

That was the peak gust on a day of strong wind that made digging out and repairing damage from a weekend storm that much more difficult.

Jamestown and surrounding areas received about 4 inches of wet snow between Friday and Monday.

“Things have gotten worse,” said Kathy Rysavy, spokeswoman for Dakota Valley Electrical Cooperative in Edgeley.

She said about 30 homes were out of power Sunday night but that increased to about 50 Monday morning.

Rysavy said the power outages were in eastern McIntosh County.

“Crews are out but there having a tough time,” she said. “Visibility is really bad with blowing snow.”

Along with its own crews, Dakota Valley had six linemen from Northern Plains Electrical Cooperative in Carrington assisting.

“We had everybody on last night,” said Dan Schuchard, assistant operations manager for Northern Plains. “But there are three residences out this morning that we can’t get to. We’re going to have to wait for a snowplow.”

Shuchard also said repairs made during the weekend in western Stutsman County would need additional work.

“From Woodworth down to Cleveland is on but in pretty rough shape,” he said. “We need to get some clear weather so we can follow up.”

Clear weather, along with cold conditions, is in the forecast for the rest of the week.

“Winds should die down by Tuesday morning,” said John Wheeler, meteorologist for Forum Communications. “They will have lightened up between darkness and midnight and pretty much quit all together by morning.”

Temperatures will remain below normal all week. The NWS forecast for the week has daytime highs in single digits every day. Normal highs in Jamestown this time of year are 19 degrees.

Winds also damaged the sign at the Perkins Family Restaurant and Bakery a little after 10 a.m. Monday.

“It felt like a bomb went off and shook the whole building,” said one of the patrons in the restaurant at the time. “The sign pulled out of the cement, bolts and all, and hit the front of the restaurant. There were shards of glass all over the lobby.”

Mike Vettl, manager of Perkins, said the incident was caused by wind. The restaurant remained open Monday.

Street crews in Jamestown also continued snow plowing and removal work during Monday’s wind.

“We’re pretty much on schedule,” said Reed Schwartzkopf, city engineer. “We’ve got crews out in the residential areas now. Monday night at 11 we’ll start on the downtown and then go back to the residential areas at 11 a.m. We’ll continue on a 24-hour schedule until everything is done.”

Schwartzkopf said the ice that formed after the warm conditions on Saturday shouldn’t slow the snow plowing and removal efforts.

“It chews up the cutting edges,” he said. “And we’ll have to spread a fair amount of salt and sand where ice is left after the plow.”

Cutting edges are replaceable edges used on the plow blades to prevent wear to the blade itself.

“The variability of the storm caused us some problems,” Schwartzkopf said. “We didn’t get the intense amount of moisture we prepped for but we’re getting more wind.”

Jamestown officially received 4 inches of snow from the weekend weather event, according to measurements taken for the National Weather Service at the North Dakota State Hospital. This amounted to 0.40 of inch of moisture. James-town currently has 17 inches of snow on the ground.

Sun reporter Keith Norman can be reached at (701) 952-8452 or by e-mail at knorman@jamestownsun.com

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