As of 7:45 a.m. Sunday morning just over 36,000 customers were without power across the province. That's down from  more than 52,000 customers Saturday afternoon according to Manitoba Hydro. Carman, the R.M. of Portage,  City of Portage, Gimli and Winnipeg still have significant numbers without power. Even though there is still significant work ahead of crews, progress is being made according to spokesperson Scott Powell.

“While we are making good progress in Winnipeg, the amount of snow around Portage la Prairie, into the Interlake and farther north is really hampering our efforts to even get crews out to begin damage assessments. Many roads are completely impassable, and we are now starting to utilize snowmobiles and tracked vehicles to access areas that would otherwise be inaccessible.”

Meanwhile, officials with Manitoba Hydro are asking Portage, Morden and Carman area residents to avoid unnecessary travel. Crews are running into difficulties traveling in these severely impacted areas due to traffic back-ups.

In many cases, ditches were full of water before the storm even hit, and are now covered with another two or three feet of snow. Powell added the utility is working with crews from Manitoba Infrastructure to ensure plows are removing snow from highways in the worst-hit areas, so crews can get out on the roads to begin their work.

“We have had reports of eight-foot drifts in a band running south from Lake Manitoba toward Morden,” Powell said. “This is going to delay our ability to respond to these outages until we can gain access and begin our damage assessments.”

While primary culprit for many local outages is again snow-laden trees breaking and coming into contact with overhead cables, the utility is also seeing weather-induced damage to its infrastructure, include broken poles, cross arms, and broken steel transmission towers. Powell stressed these are not “quick fixes”.

“We understand how frustrating it is to be without electricity, especially when we can’t even give you an estimate on how long it might take to restore. The support we are getting from our customers via social media is absolutely fantastic, and is very appreciated by our staff who are working long hours in some pretty tough conditions. Thanks to everyone for their patience.”