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Metal roofing pieces believed to be from The Market were wrapped around the Shoreline Inn sign. Photo courtesy of Brian Larsen
Wicked winds pounded Cook County for most of three straight days leading up to Christmas Day. The unrelenting ferocity caused multiple power outages, taking down trees, ripping shingles from roofs– even parts of the roof of the Market and Moose Tracks came off and vents from South of the Border Café (SOB) were torn from the roof, causing SOB to close indefinitely.
The Duluth Weather Service said gale winds reached 74 miles per hour at about 11:30 a.m. on Friday, December 23. That’s the second highest wind reading ever recorded for the harbor.
The City of Grand Marais suffered five power outages throughout Friday and into early Saturday with most outages lasting not more than 30 minutes. The City of Grand Marais gets its electricity from SMMPA, and the city has an electrical generator backup that can be turned on by SMMPA in case of a power outage. That said, the city linemen did yeomen’s work throughout the arctic blast.
Meanwhile, Arrowhead Cooperative line workers were kept busy working throughout the county to restore power to Grand Portage, Gunflint Trail, the West End, Maple Hill and other places in the county.
The Dairy Queen’s outdoor patio furniture and tables were heavily damaged in the storm. Photo courtesy of Brian Larsen
Arrowhead Cooperative Director John Twiest praised his crews who worked through the high winds and freezing temperatures. When asked on Monday, December 26, if all of the power outages had been restored Twiest replied, “That’s a great question and one we don’t have a complete answer to.
“The first outage came in at 7:53 a.m. on Friday morning. All crews were called in as it was the line from Colvill to the Border. By the time we were finished, I think the crews had run that line at least four times,” said Twiest, adding, “During an event of this nature, we chase our tails a bit, simply because trees continue to fall in areas that we had already restored.
“Another factor was the transmission line outages. When those happen, it creates a challenge for us to define exactly what is out of power and what isn’t. The transmission line went down at least three times and they got that cleared and connected back to the grid Saturday at 5:05 p.m.
The Market, located at 3 Wisconsin Street, downtown Grand Marais, received a lot of damage to its roof in the big three-day windstorm. Photo courtesy of Adrian Howard-Larsen
Along the lake shore we sustained outages from the county line to the Canadian Border. Thankfully, because of the topography of Cook County, things north of Devil Track did not suffer from the winds, only the transmission outages.
“We have been asked why the backup generation wasn’t working. It was working. When there is an issue on the transmission line, we can’t just fire it up and power the lines. Troubleshooting takes place and then Great River Energy can work their way down the line to power up the substations. Colvill and Maple Hill substations were on the generation source a few times.
“As of 12/26/22, we have restored power to as many members as we can. There are numerous issues out there that we are unable to repair, and some members will need to call electricians to fix the problems. We have removed countless trees and cleared lines for the safety of the public. We also have worked with a few members to get temporary power to their places to ensure they have a warm house.
“We will be cleaning up for quite a while yet. There are broken poles to replace, temporary fixes to repair permanently, and things we don’t even know about yet. We are just starting fiber repairs, because during those winds, we were unable to repair the fiber itself.”
Twiest was asked if he had seen weather this bad, he responded, “The weather was bad, no question. Crews have worked in colder weather, worse wind chills, but I don’t think we have ever seen sustained winds of that speed, for that long. For sure not since I have been there, but that is not that long in the cooperative’s total history.
“The staff at Arrowhead is a very dedicated group of outstanding people. When a storm of this magnitude hits us, everyone is ready and willing to do whatever it takes to take care of our members and the community. We had people using a phone app that allows them to use their cell phone to answer member calls. We had staff at the office in Lutsen, tracking outages and dispatching the crews and watching out for them to ensure they were all safe. We rotated around, so pretty much everyone contributed at one time or another.
We posted updates on Facebook and our web page as much as we could, but mainly Facebook. There is a lot of people that watch the community page, and we find that it is a good way to keep people informed. We also tried to keep updates to WTIP and Boreal for as close to real time information as we could.
“While we appreciate the many thank-you’s and gratitude, we are just a handful of the many people in our community that are out in these weather events taking care of the community. There are so many entities in the county that help us help everyone else, and they deserve just as much appreciation,” said Twiest.
Meanwhile Cook County Law Enforcement officers and dispatch were kept busy round the clock. Dispatchers and officers handled 38 “Check Hazard” calls and 42 calls announcing power outages over three days. In addition, dispatchers and officers dealt with medical emergency calls, calls for people stuck in ditches, business alarms sounding when the power would go out, and mental health issues with some criminal activity thrown into the mix. Overall, 200 calls were taken in four days, most though were received over the three-day blow.
As for the Gunflint Trail, Michael Valentini reports, “For the most part I believe the Gunflint Trail avoided any major storm damage. There were of course a few trees down here and there that I am aware of, but nothing significant. There were buildings at two different lodges that suffered some major water damage due to broken water lines. But at this point we haven’t determined if the causes were due to pipes freezing because of the loss of heat or not. We are tearing into ceilings and walls to find the sources of the breaks to make that determination. Up here it was more of an inconvenience than anything from what I have heard. Of course, many properties up here won’t be occupied until next spring or summer, and we may learn that the extent of the damages may be greater.”
As for Christmas travel plans, many people stayed home and delayed Christmas celebrations. Those that chose to try to fly found long delays or cancellations at airports around the country as more than 12,000 flights were cancelled from Wednesday through Saturday.
Temperatures are supposed to climb into the mid-30’s by this coming weekend. Weather forecasters are predicting a mix of snow and rain which will bring a different kind of slip ‘n slide pain when the temps drop at night, and everything turns to ice. Welcome to Minnesota’s “new” winters which will always feature plenty of cold and snow but in the last few years, more moisture in the form of rain.
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