Hunter
12/16/21
Thousands of Iowans are waking up without power after a brutal windstorm blew across the state yesterday afternoon into the overnight hours.
At the height of severe weather, over 150,000 had lost power.
Mid-American Energy reports that the most significant impacts have been experienced in Council Bluffs/Southwest Iowa, Ft. Dodge and surrounding areas and the Des Moines metro. Because of the extensive damage and number of trees, wires and transmission lines down, preliminary estimates suggest that restoration in those areas will take up to 36-72 hours.
The company reported over 48,000 outages at 9:30 last night, but as of this morning, they had knocked that number down to around 21,000 customers in Iowa and the Illinois Quad Cities. The Iowa City area only has 68 customers affected currently.
Alliant Energy reports under 1000 outages across Iowa and into Wisconsin, with just about two dozen customers in the Cedar Rapids area affected.