Technically, it was not hoar frost, but rime frost, Owen said. It comes up when there are perfect weather conditions. Moist air with relatively cool temperatures means almost instant freezing. The fog we had provided the moist air, and anything outside provided something to freeze to. For Hydro, this meant poles, lines and equipment on poles.
“They were coated with 2-5 inches of frost in a short period of time.”
This meant extra weight, which can pull down or break lines, and even snap poles. If there suddenly gets to be a wind, which we thankfully did not have much of, the lines become like sails and blow around and break. There was enough trouble as it was.
Owen said they started to notice the problem on Saturday with the fog, and then it was foggy again on Sunday. Power started to go out, at one point there were more than 4,000 customers without power on the weekend. He added the Killarney area was likely the worst hit, but rural residents in the Boissevain region also had several homes without power between six to 40 hours from Saturday evening to Monday evening.
Hydro crews can get the frost and ice off in different ways. One is to roll the lines, which takes the ice off, or they can melt it. To do that, they have planned outages, in which they can cause short circuit and melt the ice. At the time of speaking on Monday, they were planning a two-hour outage in Alexander and one the same duration in the Forrest area. Overall, this would mean over 2,000 customers would be without power for a short period. Owen said this might be inconvenient, but better than alternatives.
“If you don’t melt the ice, it accumulates and it does more damage, like snapping poles,” he stated.
Already, there were many lines down and poles snapped with the weekend situation. Hydro brought extra crews out from Winnipeg and Dauphin to help deal with the problems, and they had been working around the clock.
Owen said they were hoping to have power on to everyone Monday, but their twitter feed showed later there were still customers without power on Tuesday, around 500 at that time. They had rolled or melted 910 kms of lines by that point and were looking to do some planned outages in the Killarney area to clear up lines. One of the concerns, Owen explained, was that customers often thought, “Hydro knew” about their situation and so did not report in. If they do not know you do not have power, they cannot fix it. He called on everyone to get in touch with the utility so the work can continue.
Also, Owen said people have to be careful around downed power lines. They are dangerous and people should stay away and call 911 if they see one.
“We consider a downed power line an emergency situation. The biggest fear around a downed line is fire. If you call 911, they will let us know right away and we can fix it.”
Owen said he understands the frustration of people when they lose their power. They always hope there is only one of these types of incidents each season, but you never know. It hit Saskatchewan hard too, and both hydro companies had a challenge dealing with it.
“When you see this amount of frost,” he stated, “it is so big. It hit two provinces and was a major event for both utilities.”
By Wednesday morning, Hydro was reporting only scattered outages in Southwestern Manitoba.
by PAUL RAYNER, Recorder staff