(Estherville)– Heavy thunderstorms this (Wednesday) morning knocked out power to some areas of northwest Iowa.
Rick Oleson, Operations Manager for Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative, says lightning hit a breaker at the Bosler Substation at the corner of Highway nine and 15th Street in Spirit Lake shortly before 7:00 a.m. The problem really didn’t show itself though until about 9:30 a.m. when the breaker finally got weak enough that it tripped out. The resulting power outage affected the Bridgewater Business Park area on the west side of Spirit Lake. It lasted about a half hour.
High wind from a thunderstorm brought a tree down through a three-phase transmission line south and east of Spencer between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. Oleson says about 80 ILEC customers lost power as a result of that.
Isolated power outages were also reported in Cherokee and Pocahontas counties.
