Kody Johnson (left) and Jacob Preece work on a pole on Dogwood Street between Washington and Kanawha avenues in Nitro to restore power to 47 customers Monday, Feb. 17, 2025. They work for CWS Storm Response of West Liberty, Kentucky.
Kody Johnson (left) and Jacob Preece work on a pole on Dogwood Street between Washington and Kanawha avenues in Nitro to restore power to 47 customers Monday, Feb. 17, 2025. They work for CWS Storm Response of West Liberty, Kentucky.
CHRIS DORST | Gazette-Mail
West Virginia found itself in an all too familiar state after floodwaters swept through it over the weekend: powerless.
The Mountain State had the nation’s highest rate of power outages among electric customers Sunday and Monday, affecting tens of thousands of West Virginians.
West Virginia’s 30,233 outages among 1,006,909 customers as of 9:17 a.m. Monday represented a 3% outage rate that nearly doubled next-highest state Maryland’s 1.7% outage rate, which was followed by Virginia (1.31%) and Pennsylvania (1.3%), according to a power outage map published by Generac Power Systems.
West Virginia also led the country in percentage of customers with outages after rainstorms ravaged the region on Feb. 6. But West Virginia’s outage rate was much higher than surrounding states after this weekend’s flooding.
Powerless has been a common position for West Virginia, whose electric utilities have had some of the country’s worst outage duration metrics in the country in recent years.
Outage rate declines slower in W.Va. than other states
The hardest-hit county has been Mingo, where 54.3% of customers — 7,142 of 13,156 — were without power as of 11:07 a.m. Monday, according to PowerOutage.us, a website that tracks power outages nationwide.
The next-highest outage rates were in McDowell and Clay counties at the same time Monday, at 26.8% (2,795 out of 10,433 customers) and 23.2% (889 out of 3,828 customers), respectively, per PowerOutage.us. In Kanawha County, 3,142 of 98,067 customers, or 3.2%, had outages.
West Virginia’s outage rate has been decreasing more slowly than in bordering states. As of 6:17 p.m. Sunday, West Virginia’s outage rate of 5.56% was still the highest in the U.S. but just ahead of Maryland’s next-highest percentage, 5.54%.
Mingo County’s outage rate had been 60.2% as of 6:17 p.m. Sunday, with just 4.1% of customers with outages getting their power back over the next 15 hours, according to PowerOutage.us data.
APCo: High waters precluding power restoration
Appalachian Power reported that 21,200 of its West Virginia customers were without power as of 9:15 a.m. Monday after a peak of 78,000 powerless customers Sunday at 4 p.m. The electric utility said expected wind gusts over 30 mph would slow restoration work in some areas because they create unsafe working conditions for working aloft in buckets.
High waters have made restoration work inaccessible for over half of Appalachian Power customers impacted in West Virginia, the company said Monday morning. The utility said crews were using drones to assess damage before safely repairing the facilities.
Appalachian Power on Monday morning estimated 15,537 West Virginia customers wouldn’t have their power restored until 11 p.m. Thursday, consisting of:
8,950 in Williamson
2,689 in Logan
2,312 in Welch
1,435 in Hico
151 in Bluefield
On Monday morning, Appalachian Power estimated another 3,792 West Virginia customers wouldn’t get power restored until 11 p.m. Wednesday, consisting of:
1,320 in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä
886 in Glasgow
599 in Walgrove
450 in Beckley
181 in Pineville
Appalachian Power said flooding, snow and, in some areas, black ice were delaying travel for crews between job sites for the winter storm that blew through West Virginia and neighboring states Monday and the storm that blanketed the region last week.
