Idaho Power said an idaho power outage near Nampa left 2,260 people without electricity by 4 p.m. Thursday, while a separate outage near Gooding affected 77 people as storms pushed across southern Idaho.
The Nampa outage started at 3:34 p.m., and Idaho Power said the suspected cause was an object in the line. A crew was dispatched to the area, and power was estimated to be restored by 5:30 p.m. Thursday. Near Gooding, the outage began at 3:15 p.m., was blamed on weather, and had a crew on site with restoration also expected by 5:30 p.m.
The outages near Nampa and Gooding were part of a broader afternoon disruption across the Treasure Valley, where more than 5,300 people in Meridian were reported without power, more than 7,000 Boise customers were out, and 1,580 customers in the Eagle and Garden City areas also lost service. About 57 customers in Payette were affected as well, and more than 10,000 customers appeared to be caught up in outage reports across Boise, Meridian and Garden City.
The largest outage in the Boise area impacted more than 2,700 customers in the North End and downtown, while another left more than 1,500 customers on the Boise Bench without power. Idaho Power listed the causes of the Boise, Meridian and Garden City outages as under investigation and had not released estimated restoration times for those interruptions.
A severe thunderstorm warning remained in effect for parts of the Treasure Valley Thursday afternoon as strong to severe storms were expected to continue across southeast Oregon and southwest Idaho, with wind gusts potentially reaching 70 mph. The warning helps explain the spread of outages, but it does not resolve the question facing customers still waiting for lights to come back on: whether the storm damage is isolated or part of a wider system problem that will take longer to fix.
