Power Outages Persist

Uprooted trees in Ephraim show the extent of damage caused by high winds early Thursday morning. An unusually strong cold front brought lightening, thunder and high winds to Door County on December 15th through the 16th. Photo by Brett Kosmider.

357 Door County customers remain without electricity

The winds may have subsided, but some residents across the state and in Door County remained without power Friday morning.

The outages came in the wake of a fierce windstorm that blew through the state Wednesday evening, Dec. 15, and throughout the day Thursday. The Door County Sheriff’s Office said that three-quarters of its calls since Wednesday have been related to the winds.

“Wires down, trees down, signs down, debris in the roadway, utility problems and false alarms,” said Chief Deputy Pat McCarty. No injuries have been reported.

The National Weather Service in Green Bay reported wind gusts reaching 60 mph, wind speeds of 41 mph and sustained winds of 23 mph. A hurricane becomes a hurricane at wind speeds of 74 mph and higher.

A total 357 customers remained without power in Door County as of Friday, Dec. 17, at 11 am. The highest number were in Baileys Harbor (196 customers), followed by Liberty Grove (83), Jacksonport (61), Gibraltar (7), Sevastopol (7), Ephraim (2) and Egg Harbor (1).

Across the state, 16,687 customers remained without power that blinked off Wednesday. Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) said in a statement that its crews have made significant progress, restoring power to more than 90,000 customers affected by the storm. But the damage across its network has been extensive.

“Due to the widespread damage, we expect outages will last for some customers for multiple days in the hardest-hit areas,” said Matt Cullen, WPS senior communications specialist, in a statement late Thursday. 

Cullen said all available crews and resources were continuing to work around the clock to restore service to customers. Current power outage information is available at wisconsinpublicservice.com/outagesummary/view/outagegrid.