Severe winds and Xcel Energy’s preplanned outages cut power to more than 100,000 customers in Colorado on Wednesday, and most of those homes remained powerless Thursday morning.
As of 7:20 a.m., unplanned power outages were impacting 94,625 Xcel customers and 13,820 CORE Electric Cooperative customers, according to the utilities’ outage maps.
Between the two utilities, Thursday morning outages included more than 33,000 customers in Jefferson County; 31,000 customers in Boulder County; 6,000 customers in Denver; 3,500 customers in Park County and 3,000 customers in Summit County.
Power outages also impacted thousands across Clear Creek, Summit, Mesa, Larimer, Lake, Eagle, Arapahoe, Gilpin, Douglas, Conjeos, Broomfield and Grand counties.
Wind gusts reached between 90 mph and 100 mph across parts of the Front Range on Wednesday, and gusts up to 85 mph are expected Thursday night, according to the National Weather Service.
The strong winds and warm, dry weather will create critical fire weather conditions again on Friday, weather service forecasters said.
Xcel is considering a second public safety power shutoff for the severe weather, which would go into effect as early as 5 a.m. Friday, according to the utility.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
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