Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies and the real answers:

Question: Here’s your chance to unmask the huge coverup by local officials regarding the widespread electrical outage Saturday in large parts of Henderson and Buncombe counties. While WLOS and the Citizen-Times reported extensively about the breadth and scope, there has been no mention (to my knowledge) of the cause. They are completely ignoring  (or covering up) the fact that the outage coincided with a geomagnetic storm created by solar flares that for some reason targeted only our neck of the woods. Could this be because there is an energy vortex here in our area that creates a vulnerability to magnetic pulses that local officials do not want anyone to know about? There’s obviously something sinister going on here. We depend on the Watchdog to figure these things out.

My answer: I’d like to get the truth out there about all of this, but I also don’t want to wake up bound, gagged and hooded in the back of a black government SUV taking me to the special government hideout under Black Mountain.

Real answer: Let’s get some facts out there first. We did have kind of a strange power outage here in the mountains on Saturday afternoon into Saturday night. Throughout the region, more than 25,000 people were without power.

I say the outage was strange because the areas without power were kind of disjointed, including Black Mountain and Fletcher, for instance, but not many of the areas in between. So, it was kind of spotty.

As I live in Fletcher, I started getting text notices from Duke Energy at 5:38 p.m. about the outage, saying they expected the power to come back on by 9:45 p.m. As more texts came in, the projected restoration time got later, then sooner. 

Ultimately, the power came back on about 10:30 p.m. at my house, just in time for the AC to knock out the humidity. Duke also mentioned in the latter texts that the outage was “caused by damage to major power lines.”

On Monday, I reached out to Duke Energy spokesperson Bill Norton, who offered a little more detail but not all that I asked for.

“Thankfully, nothing to do with solar flares or bad actors — simply a massive tree taking out a transmission line, which affects far more customers than a tree taking out a typical distribution line,” Norton told me via email.

Norton said he gives my reader an A plus for creativity.

“Another reporter asked if the outage was related to cicadas. That might be an even bigger stretch than solar flares,” Norton said. 

No, Bill, we know the cicadas and their racket are part of a clandestine alien invasion.

Norton said the outage was caused “simply by a tree blown over by heavy winds Saturday evening, taking out a major transmission line at 5:36 p.m.”

“But it was A) a massive tree in B) a critical location that C) was hard to reach,” Norton said. “So an unusually large number of customers were affected, and restoration was challenging.”

Norton said the tree in question took out a transmission line “that runs east from the Asheville natural gas plant in Arden toward Mills Gap, then jogs back northwest to Oakley, then parallels I-40 east toward Swannanoa.”

“Along the way it intersects with a number of substations, the energy ‘exit ramps’ that bring power down to voltages suitable for local businesses and homes,” Norton said. “Each of those exit ramps was effectively closed, leading to the ‘pockets’ of outages you referenced.”

Norton used the analogy of the electric grid being similar to our transportation system, with the high-voltage transmission lines akin to interstates, substations are like exit ramps, and distribution lines like neighborhood streets.

“When a transmission line is knocked out, it affects large numbers of customers — nearly 34,000 in this case,” Norton said. “Just as would be the case if a highway were closed, there are limited rerouting options to get around a major transmission outage, particularly when dealing with lines going through forested mountain terrain.”

Duke was able to reroute around the outage for certain customers, restoring power for a few thousand just before 8 p.m., and another 8,500 by 9:20 p.m.

“But that was the limit of the electric grid’s ‘back roads’ that could be used,” Norton said. “Power came back on for the rest once the transmission line was fixed. Power was restored to those customers by 10:59 p.m. Saturday evening.”

By the way, the tree that fell was just outside of Duke’s right of way, but it was still tall enough to hit the big transmission lines by the Porters Cove Road exit off I-40. Norton said because of the extreme terrain, “our lineworkers had to safely climb the steel transmission tower to restore power to our customers.”

Duke has been “aggressively” trimming a lot of trees since Helene hit the area Sept. 27, and inspecting hard-to-reach areas by helicopters. 

“Unfortunately, while some trees look healthy upon visual inspection, they aren’t healthy enough to withstand high winds. That was the case on Saturday evening,” Norton said. “We will continue with our systematic transmission corridor inspections to limit outages like this to the greatest extent possible.”

But I will note that my reader is correct about a geomagnetic storm occurring Saturday, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

“There were geomagnetic storm levels reached later on Friday evening into the Saturday morning hours,” Shawn Dahl, the center’s service coordinator, told me via email.

But these storm levels “were only G1-G2 levels of activity, meaning they were minor to moderate,” Dahl added.

“These levels of geomagnetic storm conditions are not normally enough to cause geomagnetic induced currents of concern on the high voltage transformers and into the large transformers controlling bulk transmission electrical flow,” Dahl said. “Even localized geomagnetic disturbance conditions near the area did not appear to reach anything beyond the G1-G2 equivalent. These types of GMD levels are normally quite easily managed by transmission operation centers.”

Dahl also noted that during the time frame of the power outages — late Saturday afternoon into the evening — the geomagnetic disturbance levels were back below G1 levels at that time.

“Bottom line: We would be very surprised if the power outage were due to anything other than what Duke Energy states,” Dahl said.

If big solar storms are coming, the Space Weather Prediction Center issues warnings. 

“We at SWPC notify the power grid of most of North America when G3 (strong) or greater levels are expected and/or reached because of the growing presence of geomagnetic induced currents onto the electrical transmission systems,” Dahl said. “(These are) still normally manageable by the reliability coordinators and transmission operation centers, thanks to the early notice and updates we provide as this level of storms develop and progress.”

I also checked in with the National Weather Service, but meteorologist Patrick Moore said the Space Weather folks are the experts on solar flares and geomagnetic storms. Moore did confirm that we had a fairly strong thunderstorm pass through the Asheville area in the early morning hours of Saturday, starting around 

That storm had a high wind gust of 37 mph, but that was at 2:24 in the morning, Moore said. “It didn’t gust any higher than that during the day,” he said.

The upshot is that the “energy vortex/geomagnetic storm” theory is taking a beating here today, and that makes me a little sad. But hey, I still have faith in the giant healing crystal beneath Mt. Pisgah.

Question: We found the Barnes & Noble at Biltmore Park closed without notice (Sunday), and a sign on the door that read, “closed for maintenance.”  It seems odd that a store that size would be closed for maintenance, suggesting there could be some public safety problem.

My answer: I suspect they’re just installing a geomagnetic storm shield. You’ll thank them when their power’s still on and everybody else is sitting in the dark.

Real answer: “It’s just repairs that we’re doing on the building,” a store manager told me Monday. “I’m not really at liberty to disclose anything, but we should be open (Tuesday) or the next day.”

The store, which has been closed since May 2, will reopen “without any public safety issue,” she said.

I also reached out to the Barnes & Noble corporate office, and Janine Flanigan, vice president of store planning and design, offered a little more detail.

“We had some maintenance issues in the ceiling and duct work that needed to be addressed,” Flanigan said via email late Monday afternoon. “It’s been fixed.  As of a few minutes ago we are happy to confirm we will be reopening (Tuesday).”

I did check on current construction or building permits on file with the City of Asheville’s Development Services portal but found none.

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Got a question? Send it to John Boyle at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org or 828-337-0941. His Answer Man columns appear each Tuesday and Friday. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/

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