KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A powerful storm system is forecast to hit the Midwest this week, and those extremely cold temperatures can be dangerous for humans, animals, and power grids that help keep us warm.

According to Southwest Power Pool, it has made changes to avoid any rolling blackouts like we saw in 2021, and their crews are ready for any potential outages.

Crews from Evergy and Independence Power & Light will be ready to go in the event of any outages later this week; officials aren’t anticipating any outages as of Monday, but said their infrastructure was built to weather extreme temperatures.

“We feel we’re in pretty good shape to weather this one,” Director of Independence Power & Light James Nail said.

He said they’ll be watching for wet snow and ice weighing down any power lines and will respond to any possible outages as quickly as they can.

“The worst is if we get a lot of wet, heavy snow because then that can potentially weigh down your power lines,” Nail said. “Tree limbs can get weighed down and then that can impact power lines.”

Mary Tuter lives in Independence and said her family already has a plan in place for the severe weather.

“If we have to, we have lots of quilts, lots of blankets, and we’ll just have my daughter and her family come over like we did that storm about twenty years ago, or whatever it was that was horrible,” Tuter said.

According to a statement from Evergy, the company may proactively reroute energy if necessary to prevent losing any power.

Nail said the community can also be proactive ahead of the storm.

“If people can you know put on a few extra clothes and turn the thermostat down a little bit, not stress out the system quite as much, whatever battery-operated devices you have, have those charged up and ready to go,” Nail said.