UPDATE (6 A.M.): Wisconsin Public Service has wrapped up work in Door County, but they are still working on restoring power to over 30,000 customers in northern Wisconsin. Work resumes on Washington Island. 

As a result, Washington Island School District will be closed for a second straight day.

ORIGINAL STORY

With another weather system expected to drop more snow, freezing rain, and sleet on the area on Tuesday, crews and residents are working hard to ensure they recover from the weekend’s storms. As of 10 a.m. on Monday, more than 54,700 Wisconsin Public Service customers across the state were still without power after storms coated the area with up to a half-inch of ice in addition to rain and snow. Door County still had about 1,300 WPS customers without power, an improvement of nearly 1,000 from Sunday night. While downed trees and power lines caused some outages, there were at least two reports of blown transformers. Overall, there were over 20 reports for down trees and a dozen wire-down reports from Friday night to Monday morning. On Sunday alone, there were more than eight fire calls to local departments, many of which were related to downed power lines. The Washington Island Electric Cooperative has been addressing power outages nearly around the clock since Friday night. The power outages forced the town to open its community center as a warming shelter through Tuesday morning and Washington Island School to cancel classes on Monday. Door County Emergency Management Director Jeb Saelens expects it to be a potentially multi-day event, but adds that the community is strong.

Things were better in Sturgeon Bay, where there were a few outages due to the ice storm over the weekend. Four of SBU’s linemen were sent to assist Gresham Utilities at the request of Municipal Electric Utilities of Wisconsin (MEUW for short) Mutual Aid Assistance Program early Monday morning. Electric Utility Manager Jason Bieri states that MEUW membership allows access to over 300 municipal electric linemen in Wisconsin during large-scale outage events. SBU’s crew of eight linemen are regularly sent to assist other member communities of MEUW when storms hit.

The National Weather Service is already warning the region that another weather system is expected to hit the area Tuesday evening and last into Wednesday morning. The area could see up to four inches of snow and a tenth inch of ice as a result.