6:20 p.m., Aug. 11, 2025
We’re making our final push this evening to restore the remaining customers who lost power during this weekend’s severe windstorms.
As of 6 p.m., we have restored service to 99% of the nearly 40,000 affected customers. Nearly 500 field workers are still working hard to help the remaining 373, and we believe we can get everyone back up by the end of today, barring any unforeseen developments. If we do have any remaining outages tomorrow, the number will be extremely small and we will reach out directly to those affected.
The overnight storms snapped and toppled power poles, uprooted trees and smashed equipment that helps transmit and distribute electricity throughout eastern Nebraska.
As of last night, our field teams had replaced about 40-50 transformers, nearly 100 distribution poles and 60 to 70 crossarms. Every work site is different, but replacing a single pole can take several hours depending on accessibility, the type of pole and lines, whether the line is energized, the weather, the time of day, soil strength and dozens of other factors. The safety is of our field workers is our absolute top priority.
Our initial estimates show we had about 300 vehicles that traveled nearly 35,000 miles this weekend to restore power, and a total of 6,325 trips. For reference, last weekend we had fewer than 60 vehicles that traveled less than 3,000 miles.
Even after we declare an official end to this incident, our crews will continue with cleanup and other tasks for the next few days.
Thank you again for your patience as we wrap up this restoration. We’ll keep you posted with outage updates as we finish the job.
9:50 a.m., Aug. 11, 2025
We are working our way through the last of this weekend’s storm outages today. Nearly 500 field workers, including mutual aid partners and contractors, are concentrating on the areas that are still without power.
As of 9:30 a.m., we’ve restored 97% of our affected customers, or 38,688 of the original peak number. We’re hard at work today to help the remaining 1,109 customers who are still out.
We’re still aiming to restore all customers today, barring any unforeseen developments. Unfortunately, we’re still seeing significant damage in those areas, especially around Blair and Ashland. The work that remains is taking a fair amount of time for those crews. As other crews finish jobs elsewhere, they’re joining the effort to speed up the remaining work.
As a reminder, please stay safe, and give our workers plenty of space so they can work without distractions. We’ll continue to post here as we learn more, and feel free to contact us if you have questions.
As always, you can report outages at oppd.com, through the OPPD Connect app, or by calling 1-800-554-6773.
Below is a photo showing some of the damage our crews have encountered. The green box is a padmount transformer, which connects to underground lines that are normally shielded from severe storms.
6:10 a.m., Aug. 11, 2025
Good morning. We are entering what we believe is the final stretch of restoration work today, with 985 customers who are still without power from this weekend’s severe storms. At the peak of Saturday’s storm, we counted nearly 40,000 customers who lost electrical service.
We hope to have all customers restored today, barring any unforeseen developments. If anything changes that estimate, we will notify you here. We’ve also been contacting affected customers directly so they can plan for their situations.
If you are still without power and have not reported your outage, or if your neighbors have electricity but you don’t, please contact us so we can address the issue. As always, you can report outages at oppd.com, through the OPPD Connect app, or by calling 1-800-554-6773.
Thank you for your patience. The extent and complexity of damage after storms like these can be a challenge, but we won’t stop our push until every last customer has regained service.
We’ll share more information here as we get it. For previous posts about this storm event, click here.
