The failure of a “hot tap line” caused power outages in the entire city of Anacortes and parts of North Whidbey Sunday, according to a Puget Sound Energy spokeswoman.

The outage affecting thousands of homes occurred just after 9 p.m., which, thankfully, was hours after the Super Bowl was over.

Puget Sound Energy originally estimated that power would be returned by 11:30 p.m., but it didn’t come back on for many areas until about 1:20 a.m. Monday at the earliest. The remaining customers got their power back by 8:30 a.m., the spokeswoman said.

A hot tap line at the March Point substation failed. A hot tap line is a line that connects high voltage to a distribution line.

The spokeswoman said the company doesn’t know what caused the failure at this point. It may have been weather-related, she said, or possibly corrosion from the marine environment.