REGIONAL — An intense winter storm dumped heavy snow and brought gale force winds to the North Country this week, prompting difficult travel, occasional whiteout conditions, and widespread power outages.
As of Wednesday morning, nearly 1,000 Lake Country Power customers were without electricity, while Minnesota Power was tracking more than 2,500 outages. While there were outage clusters in the Cook area and Embarrass, the worst of the outages were south of the Iron Range, closer to Duluth. That’s where the most intense winds and heaviest snow were being reported as of Wednesday. Parts of the North Shore were forecasted to receive as much as two feet of snow and no travel was advised along Hwy. 61 and Hwy. 1 from Isabella to the shore, where blizzard warnings were in effect. A winter storm warning was in effect throughout the rest of the region.
Both the St. Louis County schools and Vermilion Country School canceled classes for the day on Wednesday due to the conditions.
As of Wednesday, it appeared the print version of the Timberjay would be delivered one day late as poor road conditions made it impossible to deliver the newspaper from the print plant.