Windy weather causes power outages through much of the Mat-Su

Weather-caused power outages that started Monday night kept crews busy throughout the Mat-Su Borough.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, more than 4,000 Matanuska Electric Association members were without power.  The largest active outage as of Tuesday was affecting more than 1,500 accounts in Willow starting at about 11:00 am.

Monday night into Tuesday morning, high winds knocked multiple trees into power lines in the Talkeetna area, but nearly all MEA members in Talkeetna had power restored by the beginning of business on Tuesday.

Outages also took out power for thousands of people in Eagle River. MEA posted on its social media on Tuesday that snow and ice that fell Monday night in the area was making it more difficult to reach some of the impacted areas.

The windy weather that caused Monday night’s outages in the Northern Valley was caused by a trough of low-pressure, according to Michael Kutz with the National Weather Service Forecast Center in Anchorage.  Kutz says winds at the Talkeetna State Airport were still gusting at about thirty-five miles per hour as of Tuesday morning, and the area near Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage had seen gusts in excess of forty miles per hour.

The good news from the forecast center is that the system that generated the unusually windy weather in the Northern Valley is/was expected to dissipate Tuesday evening, giving utilities time to catch up.