MARYVILLE, Ill. — "Day to day as long as the wind stays 30 miles an hour or less, it has virtually no impact on operations," Ameren Illinois Vice President of Electric Operations, George Justice, tells 5 On Your Side.
Monday was not that kind of day.
"When it starts gusting up close to 50 miles per hour that we have to start paying attention to what is happening," Justice said.
The issues are not typically widespread but isolated instead. Justice described the conditions on Monday.
"On a day like today, we don't expect a lot of widespread outages," Justice said. "What does happen is the wind starts blowing trees into our lines. And that's where most of our, when we get damage on a day like today, that's where most of that damage comes from is from trees."
Even with the wind, the trees right now are in a good state for storms.
"The trees haven't leafed out yet," explained Justice, "so for the next couple of weeks we should be ok. You don't see as much tree damage as you will say the middle of April to the first of May when you actually have a lot of leaves on the trees."
Those leaves act like sails and only amplify the wind. Blustery conditions are hazardous for trees and the lineman tasked with repairing damage from them.
"They're up in the air so the wind is blowing harder up where they are than it is here on the ground, so stuff is moving around," Justice said. "The wire they are trying to catch is moving around, the pole is moving around."
Sounds scary, but Justice says it's not a big deal. In his 40 years at Ameren, he's seen some storms and he's seen how new infrastructure can help.
"Those new composite poles are about five times stronger than a standard wood pole and the good thing and we've done tests, is that pole will bend like a fishing rod fifteen feet or so before it actually breaks."