Storm knocks down lines from Ten Sleep to Shell

High speed winds and snow brought a roughly 30-hour power outage to some of the Big Horn Basin’s most rural communities over the weekend. 

Jeff Pillow, general manager at Big Horn Rural Electric Company, reported that the outages started towards Ten Sleep around 11 p.m. Thursday night. The snow and ice load on the wires was ripping the poles’ anchors from the ground. 

“It just kind of kept expanding throughout the next day,” Pillow said. 

Friday morning, utility calls started coming in from the Shell area. One down substation affected about 800 meters around Shell, and crews were fighting mud to get a total 22 poles back up across the Basin. Lineman had help from J.T. Collingwood with Collingwood Construction, Larry Anderson, Ken Rempel, and Underground Locators Wade and Logan Lyman, who supplied equipment for navigating muddy roads. Eight linemen from Lovell and Basin were joined by workers from Garland Light and Power Co. and High Plains Power, Inc. through a mutual aid agreement. 

Ten Sleep and Manderson had power restored by Friday night, with most people around Shell able to get their lights back on by 7 p.m. Saturday. Shell mountain was the last to get their power back at about 8:05 p.m. Saturday night. 

“It is not abnormal, it’s usually a spring storm that’s the worst,” Pillow said of his experiences. 

The National Weather Service office in Riverton reported 3-4 inches of snow accumulation in Shell, which forecaster Adam Dziewaltowski called “a very wet, heavy snow.” He anticipated this, coupled with the high wind speeds and a temperature drop, led to ice that ultimately led to the outages. The snow was the third time snow accumulated all winter in Shell, with 4 inches in a February event and about 3 inches in December. 

Pillow explained that crews worked as fast possible to get the electric back running and will now go back and modify the lines where needed to make them more stable. He expected clean up would take another couple weeks, with one pole outside of Greybull in a marshy area set for relocation. Pillow asked for continued patience as that construction begins and thanked the many linemen and community members that helped get the power back on.