NorthWestern Energy Could Cut Power to Some Montana Residents

UPDATE - 7/23/24 5:11 PM:

NorthWestern Energy has expanded information on their original social media post as seen below to include: "There are no planned outages at this time. This is the earliest stage of the plan. If extreme weather conditions threaten our ability to safely operate the electrical grid, we will turn off power to help protect public safety."

They also indicated that if they are going to be shutting off a customer's power they will notify the customer by email or by phone call. They have specified possible locations if an outage is necessary. Those locations would be "most likely in wildfire-prone areas outside Butte, Helena, Great Falls, or Bozeman."

Original Story

Northwestern Energy posted to their Facebook page, on Tuesday, July 23rd, "NorthWestern Energy is monitoring the need for a potential Public Power Shutoff due to high winds combined with high temperatures and low humidity forecasted for the afternoon of Thursday, July 25."

They also share that this could affect "a large portion of Montana".

You can see a map of the fire weather forecast for Wednesday, July 24th at this link.

This is a developing story and we will update it as we learn more information.