ESCANABA — On Thursday morning in Escanaba, wet roads and large branches lying in boulevards remained as evidence of the storm of Tuesday and Wednesday. Power had returned to Esky, but the same could not be said for all the city’s neighbors to the north, south, east and across the bay to the west.

Shortly after 11 a.m. on Thursday, 5,288 UPPCO customers (21%) and 1,174 Alger-Delta customers (11%) in the U.P. were without power, and the number for the former was climbing. Between the two electric companies, the greatest number of outages were seen in Marquette County (3,424), Delta County (2,246) and Menominee County (760). A handful in Alger, Schoolcraft, and Ontanagon were also without electricity.

We Energy, a Wisconsin company, had over 12,000 customers without power as of Thursday afternoon. About a third of those were in the U.P., with the most affected in Menominee County, largely around Powers, Carney, and Bark River.

The power outage in the Powers area prevented Thursday’s print edition of the Daily Press from being printed. The Daily Press and several other newspapers are printed at Powers Printing in Powers, which was without electrical service Thursday

Following widespread school closures on Wednesday, some reopened on Thursday, including Escanaba, Gladstone, and Manistique. Bark River-Harris, Mid Peninsula and North Central Area Schools were closed again Thursday.

North Dickinson County School, which was not in session on Wednesday but had full power, made themselves available as a warming station. Darrell Oman said they had a few people come in for water and showers.

“We were prepared to remain open until power came back,” said Oman.

The same was also true where other warming stations opened for those without electricity, but coordinators and Delta County Emergency Management suggested that the lack of use was probably due to people staying with friends and family or simply toughing it out — after all, temperatures hardly fell below freezing.

Ford River Township Hall anticipated staying open around the clock on Wednesday if need be, but no one ended up taking advantage of the facilities. The Civic Center in Escanaba — which has been working to become a Red Cross shelter, but is for now just a warming station — will allow people to come in out of the cold and charge devices during the center’s operating hours, which on Friday are from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Electricity has been coming back online, in part thanks to help from out of town.

Riverland Energy Cooperative, a member-owned company based in western Wisconsin, sent four linemen and a couple trucks to help Alger-Delta with restoration efforts because of the “magnitude” of the storm damage in the U.P.

“We had winds here (Tuesday and Wednesday) and so had some outages, but nothing like what was seen in the U.P.,” said a representative for Riverland, adding that it’s a policy of co-ops to help each other out in difficult times.

Riverland’s crews left home Wednesday, drove about six hours, and after spending the night locally, began work with Alger-Delta on Thursday morning. They expect to be in the area for about four days, but some time will likely be for cleanup; outages shouldn’t last that long.

A recording on Alger-Delta’s phone line said that while teams are working as quickly and safely as possible to restore electricity, there is no estimated timeline for any area.

A few businesses that had power as of Thursday afternoon and were prepared to continue regular business operations on Friday were: Family Dollar in Spalding, Fazer’s Foods in Spalding, and the Perkins Store.