Truly Incredible How Fast MDU Can Get Power Restored -- North Dakota, USA

Perhaps biggest blizzard in decades for this time of year; knocked out electricity for most of western North Dakota.

Some residents did not expect electricity to return until later this week, but now it is being reported that most will have electricity restored by this evening.

Link here.

Williams and Mountrail counties, in North Dakota's northwest corner, were the hardest hit by the storm, Kalmbach said. Williams County had at least 300 poles down and Mountrail County had some 200 down, he said.

A statement issued by the North Dakota Emergency Services Department said about12,500 people in Williston still lacked power Monday. The city is serviced by Bismarck-based Montana-Dakota Utilities.

Jody Link, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jack Dalrymple, said the utility hoped to have power restored to Williston on Monday evening. About half of the outages reported in rural areas of North Dakota had been restored by Monday morning, she said.

Incredible what these linemen can do. Hats off to all of them. 

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Here's how bad the storm was, link here.

An electrical disaster hit North Dakota's oil patch early Saturday, when a blizzard driven by 60 mph winds took out all five major transmission systems serving the region.

More than 30,000 people and thousands of oil wells sites were without power in northwestern North Dakota and eastern Montana.

Dale Haugen, manager of Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative, headquartered in Williston, said not one meter of 10,000 was turning in the two-county region Saturday, a phenomenon he's never seen in his 31 years at the co-op. "We've never, never had all our meters out," he said.

The blackout abruptly stopped production at most oil wells in the region, since all but the newest wells run on grid-generated electricity, said Randy Samuelson, production superintendent for Brigham Oil and Gas, of Williston.