As many as 750 Xcel customers around the Denver metro area – mostly in the foothills – still were without power late Wednesday as energy crews slogged through snowdrifts up to 3 feet deep in spots to restore electricity following Tuesday’s storm.
“We have a lot of trees on power lines and lines down,” said Ethnie Groves, an Xcel spokeswoman.
About 1,500 homes in the Evergreen, Conifer, Indian Hills and Kittredge areas were without power at one point Wednesday, most of them because lines directly to their homes were cut off.
Another 500 customers in part of Aurora also were without power at some time Wednesday.
Groves said extra crews have been called in, and Xcel workers planned to toil through the night in an effort to get everyone back on line.
“We have been making progress,” Groves said. “But when you’re working on single- family homes, it’s more time- consuming.”
The foothills west of Denver received up to 20 inches of snow from the storm.
The Intermountain Rural Electric Association, which serves portions of 10 counties in the metro area, also had scattered reports of outages Wednesday.
In Weld County, sections of the South Platte River overflowed Wednesday because of Tuesday’s storm, said Treste Huse, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service.
The river, which flooded low-lying areas but did not cause major damage, was at its peak Wednesday, and forecasters expected it to recede overnight, Huse said.
All Douglas County schools were closed Wednesday because of sloppy and treacherous road conditions in the county, said Whei Wong, a district spokeswoman. Some schools in Jefferson and El Paso counties also were closed.
Staff writer Kieran Nicholson can be reached at 303-954-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com.
