CHARLESTON, W.Va., March 6, 2015 -- Wednesday night and into Thursday up to a foot of heavy, wet snow fell in areas of western West Virginia along the Ohio River and between Huntington and Charleston, weighing down trees and causing outages.  Although outage totals peaked Thursday afternoon at around 43,000, new outages have occurred throughout the restoration effort.

The continuing outages are largely the result of limbs and trees buckling under the weight of the heavy snow that has remained on trees since the weather system passed. Road conditions and weather are favorable for restoration today, although in some areas high water is limiting workers’ ability to reach damaged facilities.

As snow melts additional outages are likely to occur as trees bent over by the snow spring back up into lines. As of 11:30 a.m., nearly 31,000 customers in the company’s West Virginia service area were without electric service. Numbers by county include:

• Cabell -- 9,100
• Jackson -- 3,500
• Kanawha -- 4,800
• Marshall -- 200
• Mason -- 4,700
• Putnam -- 5,300
• Roane -- 900
• Wayne --1,800
• (West Virginia, all other areas) -- 400

More than 1,000 workers, including damage assessors, line workers and tree contractors are working to get power restored. The work force includes more than 300 line workers and damage assessors from outside the area affected by the storm. Although workers have made great progress under challenging conditions, there are still more than 800 locations at which repairs need made before all service can be restored.

In Cabell, Jackson, Mason, Putnam and Wayne counties, the restoration effort is expected to conclude Sunday night. Customers in all other counties affected by the storm should have service restored by Saturday evening.

This information provides a broad overview of the company’s restoration efforts. Customers who sign up for Outage Alerts can now get specific information about the outage affecting their account. To sign up, go to www.appalachianpower.com and click “Sign Up Now” under the Outage Alerts heading.

A snapshot view of current outages is available anytime at www.appalachianpower.com. Go to the Outages and Problems section of the site and click "View Outage Map."