Power back on after "500-year event"

by Nathan Arneal
Published 4/2/25

Things are pretty much back to normal following the March 19 blizzard and subsequent power outage. The Omaha Public Power District, which provides electricity to the North Bend area, called the blizzard the “most destructive weather event in OPPD history.”

More than 1,000 OPPD and mutual aid workers and contractors worked to restore power, especially in Dodge, Saunders and Washington counties where rural customers were hit hardest.

In a release last week, OPPD said the outage was the fifth largest in company history as far as affected customers, with more than 106,000 customers without power at one time. A total of 132,000 customers were affected at various times in the first 18 hours of the outage. However, in terms of damage to OPPD infrastructure, the March 19 storm was by far the largest ever encountered.

OPPD called the storm a “500-year event.” Typically, spring storms bring 1 to 1.25 inches of ice. This storm brought an unprecedented 3 to 5 inches of ice accumulation around power lines.

The people who were still without power featured in last week’s Eagle story “Powerless,” had power restored by the middle of last week.

The VanNortwicks’ power was turned back on at their Riverview Shores home last Tuesday afternoon, March 25. The Mottls, about four miles northeast of North Bend, got power back later that evening.

The Dvoraks on Foothill Road northeast of town were restored the next day, Wednesday, eight days after initially losing power. Kris Dvorak said it was just in time as the generator they were using to provide water to their cattle seized up Tuesday night.

Residents in North Bend had a much shorter outage, with power back on in the evening of Thursday, March 20, less than 48 hours after the outage began.

The snow from the storm, estimate to be about 5 or 6 inches, did not stick around. Temperatures reached 60 degrees on Friday, March 21, two days after the storm.

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