Most of Hays and large swaths of Ellis County were without power for a short time late Wednesday night after a major power outage.

The outage began just before 11 p.m. Wednesday. According to Midwest Energy spokesman Mike Morley, the outage occurred after a snake in the Knoll substation blew out an insulator and several fuses, leaving much of western Hays and Ellis without power.

The outage, which affected several thousand customers, lasted about 45 minutes.