Snake knocks air conditioning out for thousands in Outer Banks, power company says
Nearly 10,000 people were without power — and air conditioning — Monday in the Outer Banks because of a snake.
The snake was the cause of a massive outage in the coastal North Carolina beach area, Dominion Energy said.
It slithered into equipment at a power station, a Dominion spokesperson tweeted.
The snake got inside of an insulator causing the blackout for customers of the Colington substation, the Outer Banks Voice reported.
In all, 9,280 customers in Colington, Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head were without electricity for about an hour, Dominion tweeted.
Power was restored at about 8:30 a.m., WTKR reported.
It might have made for a uncomfortably warm morning for residents getting ready in the morning, as temperatures in nearby Kitty Hawk ranged between 86 and 90 degrees from 6 a.m. to noon, according to weather recordings from timeanddate.com.
That does not account for humidity, which would have made the weather feel warmer than the temperature indicated.
The type of snake that caused the massive power outage was not identified. Information on the condition of the snake, and if it survived, was not available.
In a similar situation last December, a squirrel died after getting into a Duke Energy substation and knocking out power for thousands, The State reported.
This story was originally published August 19, 2019 at 6:58 PM.
