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Power returned to Tysons Corner Center shortly after 5 p.m. Sunday following an outage that plunged nearly the entire mall into darkness.
The exact time the electricity failed is unclear, but Dominion Energy learned of the outage at about 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 1, 2026, according to utility spokesperson Aisha Khan. A mall worker said every store except Nordstrom was affected.
Dominion crews traced the outage to snow that a parking lot plow had pushed onto an electrical transformer. Moisture from the snow interfered with the equipment and caused a flash, Khan said.
Snowplow operators are not supposed to pile snow on transformers. Dominion planned to investigate in the coming days to determine how it happened.
Because the snow came from a mall parking lot rather than a public street, the plow was likely operated by a contractor hired by Tysons Corner Center management instead of the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Fairfax County experienced relatively few power outages during the previous week, despite warnings that Winter Storm Fern could cause widespread damage.
Tysons Corner Center and nearby Tysons Galleria previously lost electricity in April 2022 because of an equipment failure. Dominion restored power to both malls within two to three hours during that outage.