During the early hours of March 19, 2025, a powerful storm, named Winter Storm Nyla by the Weather Channel, moved into central Nebraska, bringing blizzard conditions and widespread damage to Perennial’s service area. Heavy, wet snow with high winds caused near-zero visibility, which resulted in widespread power outages in central Nebraska. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, all precipitation types (rain, hail, sleet, and snow) were observed. Within the first 12 hours, rain and hail transitioned to graupel, tiny snowballs, then changed to heavy, wet snow. Snowfall amounts of 5 to 12 inches were common in York and Fillmore counties. The combination of heavy, wet snow and strong winds led to widespread power outages, affecting thousands of residents. Interstate 80 was closed for a time due to the treacherous conditions, and many roads were also impassable. Crews were stranded while attempting to restore power. High winds downed trees, power lines, and even snapped utility poles, contributing to the power outages and property damage.
At one point during the storm, Perennial had outages that accounted for 98 percent of our service territory. During the storm, crews worked alongside customers with heavy equipment and county maintenance operators in an attempt to restore power to urban and rural customers. Perennial customers were faced with the challenges of no electricity, impacting their essential needs.
As the winds subsided, crews worked to begin assessing the devastation of miles and miles of wire, poles, and transformers on the ground. Perennial’s Operations Department reached out to the Nebraska Rural Electric Association (NREA), our statewide association, to begin finding out the availability of mutual aid crews from other public power districts across the state. NREA needed to know what equipment, material, and manpower would be required to restore power to the District.
As the sun rose on March 20, 2025, approximately 48 percent of Perennial’s residential customers were still without power. Perennial crews loaded up to begin another day of power restoration. Mutual aid crews from Wheat Belt Public Power District from Sidney, NE and High West Energy Cooperative, headquartered in Wyoming were enroute to York. The following day, March 21, 2025, more mutual aid crews arrived from Midwest Electric Cooperative Corporation located in Grant, NE.
As the days continued into the weekend and the following week additional mutual aid crews from Southern Public Power District based out of Grand Island, NE; Elkhorn Rural Public Power District from Battle Creek, NE; and Polk County Rural Public Power District from Stromsburg, NE arrived to assist with the restoration efforts. On a normal day, Perennial has 16 line workers, at one point, there were 46 linemen working to restore power in Perennial’s service area.
Loads of poles and other material began to arrive to keep the crews supplied with the materials needed to rebuild services. Crews continued to repair the infrastructure, while towns and villages were restored fairly quickly, some rural areas took longer which can make the progress appear slower. Perennial and mutual aid crews worked hard to get power restored to every residential service. Routine jobs that were not storm related were pushed back due to rebuilding nonresidential services such as irrigation services. Everyone worked as a team with one goal, safely restore power.
Most days began with crews being fed breakfast at Perennial’s office, taking a sack lunch and snacks and then an evening meal would be delivered to the crews in the field by office employees, board members and customers. Many customers brought snacks into the office or even delivered them to crews in the field.
Perennial support staff worked diligently to update job requirements daily for the crews, this involved coordinating job locations, materials needed, meals and lodging for mutual aid crews. Over 1,000 poles were replaced throughout the District in approximately 30 days. For comparison, last year we replaced approximately 500 poles total. The March 19th blizzard was the most destructive weather event in Perennial’s service area since the March 29, 1976, blizzard. Outage response technology played a crucial role in the restoration process, the use of geographical information system tracking and advance metering infrastructure technology helped pinpoint outages with greater accuracy and helped increase efficiency. Steve Gerken, Manager of Operations, stated, “The modern advancements helped the line workers stay aware of the current line feeds and where other crews were working to keep everyone safe.”
This blizzard brought many challenges to the customers of Perennial Public Power District. We could not have restored power as quickly as we did without the help of our customers, lending a helping hand to open roads for crews, patrol line, or to deliver meals to crews. This was neighbors helping neighbors, and the foundation in which public power is built on. We are incredibly grateful to everyone that played a role in restoring power after the March 19th blizzard. Thank you for your kind words, continued support, patience and understanding during the restoration process.
