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THURSDAY, 9:30 AM – SEE UPDATED INFORMATION FROM UPPCO HERE.
Power companies continue to struggle to restore electricity to some of the thousands who lost service during Wednesday’s winter storm.
As of 5:00 Thursday morning, the Upper Peninsula Power Company had provided no recent updates about how many customers were still without power, or when power might be restored. The company’s online outage map failed Wednesday. A phone operator promised to relay our request for information to company officials. Ontonagon REA’s number had a recorded message confirming numerous outages still to be addressed.
In a release Wednesday afternoon, the Houghton County Sheriff’s Department said many of the failures were “end of the line” outages, which will take time to track down and repair.
As homes grew colder Wednesday afternoon and evening, the Salvation Army in Hancock opened a warming station. A Houghton County Sheriff’s Department deputy said this morning that he did not know if it had been used, and thanked the Salvation Army for its willingness to help.
Many of the power outages were caused by falling limbs and trees which were brought down by a combination of gusty winds and heavy, wet snow.
The winds also pushed waves from Lake Superior onto some roadways. Highway M-26 was closed late Wednesday morning at Great Sand Bay because of water on the road. At 9:30 Thursday morning, the MDOT website indicated the road had reopened. Waves also reached across US-41 at the head of Keweenaw Bay Wednesday afternoon. Warning signs were posted, but the highway remained open.
