SaskPower crews were busy restoring power to residents in the West Central region on Tuesday following Monday's blizzard. The most affected areas that lost power were Eston, Plato, Tyner, and White Bear. 

Media Relations Consultant for SaskPower, Scott McGregor detailed when and how many people were without power. 

“We started getting notifications from the Eston area at about 1:30 yesterday afternoon. Approximately 1500 customers were affected by the storm. We were able to restore about 800 customers last night by about 8 o’clock in the evening, with the remaining customers staying off overnight. We were able to get them back on by 8:30 this morning though.” 

The strong winds combined with snow caused whiteout conditions with almost zero visibility at times, making it almost impossible for crews to assess what the problem was. 

“Our crews did have difficulty getting to the area where the line faults happened due to poor road conditions, visibility, high winds, etc. Once we were able to get out there, we managed to get everything turned back on.” 

Once crews were able to attend to the issue, they determined what the cause of the outage was. 

“It was likely due to line gallop. Its when 2 lines are swinging in the wind. Sometimes it causes lines to come down, but last night in this scenario, we're pretty sure it's just from the lines coming into contact with one another.” 

The storm was felt throughout much of the province, with Weyburn also losing power to a large number of residents. 

Approximately 4500 customer’s power did go out across the province as a result of the storm. The majority had their power returned in the morning hours with the remaining turned on around noon.  

SaskPower would also like to remind anyone who discovers a downed power line or damaged power pole to remain at least 10 meters, approximately 33 feet away and call SaskPower, or if its an emergency to call 911.