Power and phone services were restored to most Wasatch Front homes and businesses Monday morning after a snow and rain storm pummeled Weber, Davis and Salt Lake counties last week.
The storm left thousands of Utah Power customers in the dark and hundreds of US WEST users with static on the lines or no phone service at all as heavy snow weighed down tree branches, arcing, shorting out and downing power lines. The storm also knocked out a handful of area substations.Utility customers felt the brunt of the blackouts Friday and Saturday, when some 20,000 people were affected, said Utah Power spokesman Dave Eskelsen.
Still, there were "dozens" who remained without electricity Monday morning, such as East Mill Creek resident Mark Olson.
"In our case, it went out Friday at 6:30 a.m., and is still out," he said. "We called, then a crew came out and the rest of the neighborhood is back up except us."
Olson said the three-day plus outage is more of an inconvenience than anything else and said he was fortunate that his in-laws lived nearby for his family to stay with.
Eskelsen said there were still some individual services to restore in Ogden as well, mostly where meter bases or other structures were damaged.
For the most part, however, he said people weathered the outages with patience.
"We're getting some calls from some pretty hearty souls that managed the outages pretty well with wood stoves and things like that," he said. "They're just now getting us information that they're down.
"I think most people were real understanding, although we had some that were pretty upset, of course, but when you consider the amount of calls we had, there was a small minority of angry callers."
The power was out in scattered areas from Tremonton in northern Utah to the southern part of Salt Lake County, Eskelsen said. Altogether, the outages may have left more customers without electricity than any other in history, he said.
Utah Power provides 80 percent of the electricity for the state and is the major supplier along the Wasatch Front. But other power companies, such as the ones run by the cities of Kaysville, Bountiful and Provo, also had power failures.
In Ogden, the American Red Cross of Northern Utah set up a shelter at a middle school for those who were chilled and hungry on Fri-day.
By Saturday though, they closed the shelter and concentrated on helping the 145 mostly elderly residents of St. Benedict's Manor.
Northern Utah is in for another winter wallop, according to the National Weather Service. Snow was predicted for all but the low southern Utah valleys on Tuesday, beginning about mid-day.
Eskelsen said the new storm shouldn't pose as big a problem, since the trees are no longer a threat.