Around 40,000 without power in Wisconsin after storms bring heavy, damaging winds

Over 40,000 people in Wisconsin are without power on Wednesday morning after a strong evening storm system moved through much of Wisconsin and brought intense, damaging winds.

Three Wisconsin utility companies — Wisconsin Public Service, We Energies and Madison Gas and Electric —reported almost 44,0000 people were without power at 6:35 a.m. The largest outage is in the Madison area.

A statement on the company’s website said the storm caused over 250 outages and affected 42,000 of its customers, making it one of the largest outages in its history.

MGE said it did not have an estimated restoration time and that customers should plan to be without power for multiple days. MGE said it has reached out to numerous assistance groups for help in its effort to restore power but noted that the storm’s impact was leading other utility companies to do the same.

“With daybreak arriving, our damage assessment teams will be able to better assess the extent of storm damage,” the company’s website said. “Widespread damage from this storm includes numerous broken poles, downed trees, branches and wires. It often takes the majority of a workday to repair one broken pole.”

Wisconsin Public Service, or WPS, said that more than 10,000 customers were without power across 389 outages. On its website, it said that Marathon, Brown, Oneida, Lincoln and Door counties were the most affected.

An outage map from We Energies showed that over 6,000 were without power, with the majority in southeastern Wisconsin.

Tuesday night’s storm brought widespread damaging winds and an unconfirmed report of a tornado, according to the National Weather Service’s Green Bay office. Throughout the state, the NWS issued tornado warnings and other weather alerts, as the storm lingered until around midnight in eastern Wisconsin.

On Tuesday morning, the NWS warned winds could exceed 74 miles per hour. Marcia Cronce, a meteorologist at the Milwaukee NWS office, said winds at that speed can topple trees and lead to power lines falling over.

The NWS is typically not able to confirm tornadoes until the following day.

On social media, many shared videos of the storm and the intense rains.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Over 40,000 without power in Wisconsin after damaging winds from evening storm