Approximately 30 residents west of Whitehorse were without power for about three hours Thursday evening in -20 C weather because of heavy snow, says Yukon Energy spokeswomen Janet Patterson.

Patterson said today the Boxing Day outage affected about 20 residents in the south end of the Mendenhall subdivision and about 10 others living along the Alaska Highway from Annie Ned Creek to Mendenhall.

"We got a call from somebody in Mendenhall at 20 minutes past five last night,” she said.

"We had to send somebody out there and we took along a standby generator because we were not sure what we would be faced with, and that is why it took us three hours to get the power back on.”

Patterson said the Yukon Energy crew found the problem, knocked the snow off the line and replaced two fuses to get the power back on.

There was no need to hook up the generators, she said.

Patterson explained that heavy snow on the lines can cause them to sag and touch each other, triggering a short on the system.