Photo courtesy of UPPCO An Upper Peninsula Power Company lineman works to restore electricity on Thanksgiving Day, after a tree fell across power lines causing an outage.

HOUGHTON — The first real winter storm of the season, which began late Tuesday night and lasted through Thanksgiving morning, dumped in excess of two feel of snow in some areas, with high winds knocking down dozens of trees, blocking roads and leaving thousands without electricity. Most area schools, including Michigan Tech, were already in Thanksgiving recess by the time the storm hit and were not impacted by the blizzard.

While the vast majority of electric customers had their power restored by late Thursday, hundreds were left in the dark and throughout the holiday weekend. According to maps provided by both the Upper Peninsula Power Company (UPPCO) and the Ontonagon Rural Electrification Association (REA) there were still outages in several areas as of late Sunday morning.

By 10 a.m. Sunday, REA reported 445 customers without electricity in Ontonagon County, 385 in Baraga County, 137 in Keweenaw County and more than 900 still without electricity in unspecified locales. By late Sunday morning, UPCOP reported that more than 99% of customers were online. However, there were still more than a hundred customers in Houghton and Baraga Counties who had yet to have their electricity restored.

Line crews from both utilities worked round the clock to identify the source of the outages, in most cases fallen trees knocking down service lines. Heavy snow and lines located in remote wooded areas made finding the downed lines challenging.

Several fire departments responded to the situation by offering “warming shelters” for those left in the dark. The Bootjack Firehall, Chassell Firehall and Quincy-Franklin-Hancock Township Firehalls were open late into the evening Wednesday providing not only heat and shelter, but hot food, supplies and opportunities to charge electronic devices.

The National Weather Service reported that the Twin Lakes area received the greatest amount of snow locally at more than 24 inches, while the Ironwood/Hurley area in the far western UP had the highest snow total in the region at more than 31 inches as a result of the two-day winter weather event.

By 1 p.m. Sunday the last of the weather advisories issued by the National Weather Service Marquette office was set to expire. Todays forecast is calling for a 30 percent chance of snow showers, mainly after 1pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 23. Wind chill values between zero and 10. Southwest wind 10 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph.