While many areas in the southeast and beyond have already had power restored despite the oppressively fast winds, the work for SaskPower is extensive after last night's gusts at times topped 120 kilometers per hour. Much of their work is ongoing.

From repairing snapped power poles to pulling entire trees out of the lines, the work to restore power to the province hasn't been easy. And it really has been to restore power throughout the province as winds hit just about every corner of Saskatchewan. 

"About three or four years ago we had ice buildup on some transmission lines in the Estevan area," said SaskPower media relations consultant Scott McGregor, "that caused a widespread outage through the southern half of the province. That's probably the closest to what we've experienced now."

The scope of outages was almost impressive. As far northeast as Nipawin and as far southwest as Maple Creek, customers lost power. As of noon, there were still about 78,000 without power. The storm caused 780 outages that they know of that affected 100,000 customers. 

"It's never ideal to have your power go out, especially in the wintertime," McGregor said. "All of the feedback we've been hearing from customers and from line technicians and so on is that everyone understands why their power is out and why it's taking so long to come back on."

As for why the power is taking so long to get back on, you can thank the same thing for that as for the power outage in the first place: the high-speed winds. 

"The southwest is starting to subside a little bit, but in most parts of the province it's still very windy," said McGregor, "which makes it unsafe for a lot of repairs to be done. If one of our technicians has to climb a pole or go up in a bucket, we can't do that while it's super windy."

McGregor added that anyone who comes across damaged SaskPower equipment, such as a downed power line, should keep at least ten meters away and call them about it as soon as possible. He also said their social media was regularly updated, so if you're wondering how long you'll be without power that would be the best place to go for updates.