Fifty power poles were broken as storms swept across the region this weekend, affecting 17,275 customers since Friday, Xcel Energy spokesman Wes Reeves said. “We had out events scattered pretty widely over our service territory,” Reeves said. “Since Friday, we had 454 events where we had different outage locations (including) momentary blinks.” In Hale County, 22 power structures were damaged by straight-line winds with gusts of up to 80 mph, Reeves said. read more