Equipment failures, it appears, are becoming the norm for the electric utility serving Southwestern Virginia.

Although the weather Sunday was unseasonably warm with rain falling, power outages struck six counties and left thousands in the dark because equipment in Appalachian Power Company‘s electrical grid failed.

Power outages hit Floyd, Pulaski and Wythe Counties late Sunday morning with Henry and Pittsylvania counties going dark by early afternoon — leaving some 2700 homes and businesses without power on the last Sunday before Christmas.

With power restored to all but Henry County by early evening, another outage knocked out services in the Boones Mill and Clearbrook areas.

At first, APCO would say only that the outage was “equipment related.”  Finally, spokeswoman Teresa Hamilton Hall blamed the outage on a company “distribution line.”

The outages marked the second time that equipment failures by the company have stranded customers.  A massive transformer outage knocked out power overnight in Floyd and Montgomery Counties on Dec. 6 during unseasonably warm weather.