• Preventing fires and other calamities by proactively shutting off power in advance of inclement weather is dependent on forecast precision; customers’ needs should also be a considered factor. • Following up on my prior blog post , wherein I detailed my “interesting” mid-November, I’ll now share that mid-December was “interesting” as well, albeit for a different reason. • I’ve mentioned before that my residence in the Rocky Mountain foothills west of Denver, CO, is no stranger to inclement weather. • Mid-year monsoon storms are a regular presence, for example, such as a September 2024 example that, like 2014 and 2015 predecessors, zapped various electronic devices, leaving them useful only as teardown patients going forward. • Everyone knows it’s Windy More generally, it tends to be “breezy” here, both on a sustained and (especially) gusty basis. • See for example the multi-day screenshots I snagged as I was preparing to work on this writeup: That said, mid-December 2025 was especially crazy.
Article Summaries:
- Xcel Energy shut off power in the Denver‑area mid‑December 2025 to pre‑empt wind‑related damage, following a history of wind‑caused fires such as the 2021 Marshall Fire that killed two people and destroyed over 1,000 structures. The company warned of a potential outage on December 15, initially citing 500,000 customers but later scaling to about 50,000, before ultimately disconnecting power for more than 100,000 residents on December 17 after gusts peaked at 85 mph. The author’s home lost power twice, with service restored on December 18 and again on December 20, but full restoration took into the next week. Xcel’s actions are framed by legal precedent and ongoing litigation over its role in the Marshall Fire.
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