The outages were caused by leaf heavy trees burdened with wet snow touching power lines, said Dave Gardner, Golden Valley Electric Association vice president.
"It's reminiscent of 1992," Gardner said, referring to an early September snow that left some residents without power for weeks.
"This is the same situation," he said.
The National Weather Service forecast a warming trend that should dry up the mess by the weekend.
In the meantime, GVEA crews and contractors had been out in the field all day Tuesday cutting down or shaking trees that may interfere with electrical services, Gardner said.
The first outage was reported at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday and by evening electricity had been restored to 75 percent of homes and businesses, Gardner said.
The remaining outages were new, he said.
"We'll get the power back up in one neighborhood and it'll go out in another," he said. "Then we'll rush our crews over there."
Candace Smith, of Salcha, said her power had been out for nearly 12 hours at her Orchid Drive home where it had been snowing since Monday evening.
"I am just so unprepared for this," she said Tuesday evening. "My wood is still not stacked. All my potatoes haven't been dug up."
Smith and her family arrived in Alaska from Maine in time for the 1992 snowstorm, she said.
"I told people afterwards don't ever tell us we're not real Alaskans," she said. She spent Tuesday reading by a Coleman lantern, she said.
At the Salcha River Lodge, business continued under candlelight and head lamps, said owner Shelly Shewokis. The Richardson Highway business serves as post office, restaurant, convenience store, gift shop and liquor store, she said. The lights went out at 5:30 a.m.
The mail was sorted by flashlight, she said. Candlelit diners ate meals cooked by propane stoves, she said.
"A lot more people came by," she said.
The clouds dumping wet snow east of Fairbanks are part of the same system that is giving Fairbanks a good drenching, said meteorologist Scott Berg with the National Weather Service.
The weather service received reports of snowfall being anywhere from two to five inches, Berg said, while Smith said she had about six to seven inches in her yard.
"All of it should melt off over the next couple of days," Berg said. The temperature could reach the mid-50s by Saturday with lows in the 25 to 30 degrees range, he said.
-- Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
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