An oddly warm winter and two days of near constant precipitation led to a buildup of extremely heavy, icy snow this past weekend. The storm brought down power lines and trees all along the Spur Road and covered the roads in a layer of slush and standing water. At the outages’ peak, 2,700 households in the Upper Valley found themselves without power.
The outages began early Saturday morning and continued through the weekend as more people in Talkeetna, Petersville, Meadow Lakes, Caswell, and Trapper Creek lost power.
Long time Talkeetna resident Shoo Salasky said that Saturday night, “it sounded like [she was] in a war zone with trees snapping and branches flying.”
Without power, many Upper Valley residents were still able to heat their homes using wood stoves. However, the people relying on electric heaters were not so lucky, especially with temperatures plummeting below zero over the next few days.
The Matanuska Electric Association worked nonstop through the weekend to restore power, but the weather conditions made tackling all the outages a struggle. As one house would be brought back, another tree might fall and two more could lose power.
While it is unclear when people can expect to have their power back up and running, MEA continues to send crews out to fix the issue.
