After almost six days of work, linemen in the Fairbanks area have fully restored electrical power to the roughly 21,000 customers affected by Tuesday's record snowfall.
According to an outage update from the Golden Valley Electric Association posted at 9 a.m. Monday, outages related to the snowstorm, which saw numerous snow-laden trees come down on electric lines, have been repaired.
Fairbanks was left reeling by nearly 1 foot of snow Tuesday, which cut power to traffic signals in the downtown area as well as several state offices and saw the Red Cross establish warming shelters. GVEA was quickly able to reconnect the majority of its affected customers, but about 3,000 people were still in the dark on Friday.
Although Anchorage-based linemen brought up on a temporary basis have been sent home -- conducting repairs on Parks Highway power lines as they headed south -- the association still has crews in the field and is planning to deal with similar outages in the future.
"There are still repairs that need to be made and trees that need to be removed," GVEA officials said. "We expect weakened trees to continue to fall into power lines due to groundwater saturation."
The utility thanked its customers and employees for adapting to the storm and asked anyone still affected by the outage or related concerns from service to call 907-451-1151.
"We appreciate our members' patience during this storm outage," officials with the association said. "We realize this was an extended outage for many of you."
The National Weather Service's Monday forecast for the Fairbanks area called for isolated snow east of the city, with partly cloudy skies and daytime high temperatures in the mid-40s, falling to evening lows in the 20s.