High winds cause outages

Sunday morning's high winds caused 198 power outages in Clovis and 27 outages in Portales, according to Wes Reeves, spokesmen for Xcel Energy for Texas and New Mexico.

A report issued 6:10 p.m. Sunday by the National Weather Service in Albuquerque covering the previous 25 hours listed the following peak gusts in Curry and Roosevelt counties.

• Texico — 62 mph at 9:15 a.m.
• Cannon Air Force Base — 61 mph at 9:31 a.m.
• Dora — 64 mph at 10:35 a.m.
• Tolar — 56 mph at 10:14 a.m.
• Portales — 42 mph at 8:49 a.m.

Reeves said the outages were reported between 9:46 a.m. and 12:36 p.m. Sunday. He said the Clovis outages were concentrated with 197 occurring in the same time frame near the Norris Street substation.

Reeves said the Portales outages were scattered and caused by tree branches falling on or blowing into lines. He said the majority of the outages were repaired by 1:35 p.m. Sunday.

According to Reeves, this amount of damage is typically what Xcel sees when area winds reach these speeds.

"We're entering our windy period and I would like to remind customers to remain vigilant of trees falling into lines and tree branches falling into their backyards," Reeves said.

"We would like to ask customers to kind of be our eyes and report outages and potential problems immediately."