A busy weekend for Manitoba Hydro crews continues Sunday with multiple outages reported across Southwestern Manitoba. Due to the weight of extensive frost

Picture courtesy Barry Lamb and ice on power lines some have been pulled down, while others have been damaged. As of 8:30 Monday night, according to the Crown utility's website, 1,553 customers were without power.

Manitoba Hydro is encouraging area residents to treat all downed power lines as live, adding iced lines tend to sag near roads and intersections, so driving cautiously is also advised.

 

Bruce Owen is a media relations officer with Manitoba Hydro and he says crews have spent the past two days working to restore power because of outages caused by heavy frost. "We've had a lot of frost and with that frost and it clings to everything including our lines. We've had crews out rolling lines. We've had a lot of lines down and we have been dealing with some broken poles because just that added weight causes these issues."

 

In some cases Hydro creates short circuits to heat up the lines to get rid of the frost. "At the peak time on the weekend we had 5,000 customers without power and the plan is to try and have everyone back on line as soon as possible on Monday."

The outages have been reported from the Saskatchewan border over to Highway 75, south of Winnipeg, and mostly in areas south of the Trans Canada Highway.

Extra crews are out across the area working to restore power as quickly as possible, focusing on clearing ice and frost from lines and repairing them.

You can report an outage in your area by clicking here.

Picture courtesy Barry Lamb