Comment by colechristensen

>Structure of the distribution network? Ease of accessing the lines?

Ice storms/blizzards in the upper midwest can last days and make roads impassible to the point where they can't/don't fix the very many downed lines until the storm passes enough that they don't have to deprioritize rural roads and outages.

It's just not safe/possible to fix a line downed by ice when it's -30 out in blizzard conditions even if the trucks could navigate the roads.

This turns into the occasional several day outage for some folks.

I've also lived in parts of cities that essentially were impossible to have power failures absent very local equipment failures (like the power equipment attaching my building to the grid failing once) because the lines were underground and there was a power plant very close by.

It depends on a lot of things and lots of people assume everywhere else is just like where they are.