Electric cooperatives are restoring power after a winter weather system swept across North Dakota and parts of South Dakota over the weekend. A foot of snow and high winds temporarily knocked out electricity to about 17,000 North Dakotans and 1,500 South Dakotans.
Trevor Jones is the general manager of the South Dakota Rural Electric Association. He says the outages lasted about seven hours starting Sunday night.
"Citizens in that neck of the woods are well equipped with generators. They know the terrain, they know the weather up there is pretty unpredictable so when these outages do occur, a good portion of them luckily have some resources to fall back on.”
Jones says there’s minimal infrastructure damage. Buffalo, Perkins and Corson counties were the most affected by the outage in northwest South Dakota.
