by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — About 600-700 members of Sumner-Cowley Electric Co-op were out of electricity on Tuesday due to Monday evening’s storm.

Cletas Rains, Sumner-Cowley Electric CEO, said he expected all power to be restored by the end of Wednesday.

“It’s scattered all over across the state line,” Rains said of the members most affected by the outage. “We service customers from Cowley to Sumner to Harper Counties. They got a lot more snow on the south end of the county than we did up north here in Wellington.”

The second storm was much more wet and windy, Rains said. It caused the snow to stick to power wires. The heavy winds caused the lines to bounce into one another, thus shorting out. He estimated that 30 poles were broken due to the weight of the snow.

Crews from J and J Powerline Contractors, out of Dodge City, were brought in to assist. The crews were out Monday evening but quit after visibility from the storm came to a standstill around midnight. Rains said on Wednesday electrical crews are busy restoring electricity at the substations and working their way out to the more rural area. He anticipates most of the power in Sumner County will be restored by tonight.

The Wheatland sub-station in Caldwell was especially hit hard from the storm and a crew wass working full-time to get power restored there.

Rains said he did not know of any electrical lines down north of Wellington.