July 29th, 2024 - The National Weather Service has extended the Red Flag Warning for Moffat County, Baggs, Savery, and Dixon until 8:00 pm July 29, 2024. This represents which is just over 7,000 meters. Members who are impacted by us going into Fire Protection Mode (FPM) have received a call and/or email from Yampa Valley Electric Association (YVEA).
To view a map of the areas affected by the Red Flag Warning, go to the National Weather Service website at noaa.gov or https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/map/?wfo=psr
A Red Flag Warning means that critical fire weather conditions are either occurring now or will shortly, including wind and low relative humidity.
For the affected areas in our district, YVEA will remain in FPM which may involve disabling reclosing equipment. This means outages may be more likely to occur and take longer to restore. If power goes out during a Red Flag Warning, line crews will inspect the entire affected area before restoring power; however, inspections cannot begin until the wind dies down. Because of these additional inspection requirements, if members lose power, they should anticipate longer duration outages. We currently have no plans to implement a complete shutdown of our system – we would only do so if conditions change drastically or at the direction of emergency management.
If NOAA cancels the warning at 8 pm and does not extend the Red Flag Warning, our crews are prepared to work tonight to put the system back into normal operations. We will continue to monitor the situation closely, and will keep you informed if conditions progress and the utility moves to the next operating mode. Please stay safe!
View our Wildfire Mitigation Plan at https://www.yvea.com/outages-safety/wildfire-mitigation/