A spring storm swept through Montana, dumping up to 20 inches of snow in the mountains and knocking out power to tens of thousands of people across the state, officials said Tuesday.
Approximately 30,000 homes and businesses in Bozeman lost electricity on Tuesday morning as the storm moved through, NorthWestern Energy spokesman Butch Larcombe said. The lights were back on across most of the city less than two hours later, and crews worked to restore the remaining powerless areas and to find the cause of the outages.
"We had an issue with the transmission line," Larcombe said. "We don't know what the issue is, but we expect it's related to snow and wind."
The night before, the storm cut power to customers in Phillipsburg and Judith Gap. There were pockets of smaller outages scattered across central and southwestern Montana, Larcombe said.
© Beth IhleHeavy snow fell in the Little Belt Mountains Tuesday with about a foot falling at the Belt Creek Ranger District office in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest.
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