REGIONAL—Tuesday’s powerful winds knocked out electrical service to more than 4,800 Lake Country Power customers at the peak of the storm, with more than a quarter of the outages reported in northern St. Louis and Lake counties.

The largest single concentration of outages occurred in the Ely area, with several hundred customers reporting lack of power as of late Tuesday.

The outages rivaled those experienced by the rural cooperative as a result of the July 2016 derecho, when about 5,000 customers lost power.

As of Wednesday, Lake Country Power had the power back on in most locations, with about 1,000 customers still without service, according to spokesperson Tami Zaun. She said repair crews were hopeing to have everyone back on line by the end of the day on Wednesday. “Crews have been working hard on it,” said Zaun, but noted that the extended period of high winds was creating unique challenges. “They’re finding they can get a section of line back up and then the wind blows over another tree somewhere else down the line.

Falling trees proved a hazard to more than just power lines. The St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office reported a 58-year old Britt man was injured Tuesday by a falling tree. Robert Edblom was working with a crew to clear a downed tree across a roadway when the second tree fell and struck him. He was transported by Life Link helicopter to St. Mary’s in Duluth, with non-life-threatening injuries.

The damage was sparked by an extraordinarily deep and slow-moving low pressure system that moved across northern Minnesota on Monday and Tuesday, bringing snow squalls and some of the strongest winds to hit the area since last summer’s derecho. Monday night, on the warm side of the low, brought thunderstorms and periods of heavy rain to the area. The rain turned to snow by Tuesday morning as the low tapped much colder air from Canada. Barometric pressure at the center of the low reached 28.56 inches of mercury— not a record, but not far off from the all-time record low reading of 28.21 inches set in 2010 at Bigfork.

The National Weather Service reported sustained winds in excess of 30 miles per hour with peak gusts around the area approaching 50 miles per hour. International Falls recorded a 49-mile per hour gust, while the Ely airport recorded a 46-mile per hour gust.

The high winds knocked down trees and created occasional white-out conditions on roadways. About an inch of fresh snow fell during the day on Tuesday, with another inch or two overnight, creating slippery driving and poor visibility in exposed locations. With temperatures in the single digits on Wednesday morning, windchills dipped well below zero. The colder weather is expected to linger through the weekend, with highs in the teens and lows either side of zero.