The Western Slope is home to Palisade High School, the Western Slope has had a record warming winter, and this next week the Western Slope is expected to have high winds that could potentially exceed over 40 mph this week according to the National Weather Service. For safety reasons, Xcel Energy determined to have a scheduled power outage to prevent power lines falling and potentially causing wildfires. The outage was scheduled to happen on Wednesday, April 22, around 12 pm which could have affected the Front range and possibly Palisade.
With the chance of the outage happening and affecting staff, students, and teachers, Joey Webster, a Sophomore at PHS comments, “I think the power potentially going out for Grand Junction could mess up a lot of people’s schedules. People who work in offices and work from home or potentially even students that do schooling online could be messed up because certain things like computers are a big part of the workforce, along with AI and other stuff like that.” As Webster said power is used more than ever in today’s society, with places such as healthcare, commercial businesses, and industrial places all using power one way or another. Webster realizes that this affects more than just ordinary people; this can also affect students at Palisade. Webster further elaborated on the impact of PHS students stating, “A lot of students check their grades or online assessments throughout the day.” Luckily, as of Wednesday the 22nd, this “Scheduled” power outage did not affect PHS and its community, and Palisade was able to do school like normal.
With this being said, our community recently has shown remarkable resilience navigating unexpected situations like the recent scare of the power outage. Bulldogs, let’s continue to carry that same strength and PHS spirit as we move forward to summer break.
