After waiting through a lengthy winter dry spell, the Kenai Peninsula was hit with wet, heavy snow over the weekend and the hazards that come with it.
Parts of the peninsula, including Kenai, Soldotna, Homer and Cooper Landing, were under a winter weather advisory until 6 p.m. Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
Alaska State Troopers and Central Emergency services were called out to mile 98 of the Sterling Highway near Soldotna around noon on Sunday when a single vehicle slid into the ditch, according to an online trooper dispatch.
The driver, 49-year-old Sheri Vickaryous, stuck a telephone pole after going into the ditch while driving southbound, troopers wrote in the dispatch. The vehicle sustained major damage and had to be towed away.
Vickaryous and her passenger were taken by CES personnel to Central Peninsula Hospital for non-life threatening injuries, said CES Captain Reed Quinton.
Employees of Homer Electric Association also stayed busy while the flakes fell. HEA spent the day dealing with several power outages.
Sunday morning and into the afternoon, workers responded to two outages in Anchor Point that left about 115 members without power, according to several HEA releases. As of 3:45 p.m. Sunday, HEA was responding to outages in Homer affecting about 31 members — one on Skyline Drive and one on Bayview Avenue — as well as to 232 members without power on Mackey Lake Road in Soldotna and an unidentified number of members in the Ninilchik Village area, according to the releases.
Director of Member Relations Joe Gallagher wrote in the releases that residents ought to stay away from downed power lines.
“The outages are the result of heavy snow that has fallen in the area today,” Gallagher wrote in one of the releases.
Reach Megan Pacer at megan.pacer@peninsulaclarion.com.
