Submitted Photo One of the hundreds of power poles downed by April’s historic storms laying near the ghost town of Stady in Divide County on May 5. Photo by Roger Riveland.

With the end of May approaching, regional electric cooperatives are finally nearing a return to full power.

Thousands found themselves without power back in April after a barrage of snow and ice storms felled powerlines across the region, sending cooperatives and emergency workers from multiple states scrambling to get the power back on. Many residents limped along with expensive generators to heat their homes, or sought refuge in hotels while workers battled tirelessly to raise miles of meters across the northwest corner of the state.

Burke-Divide Electric Cooperative contended with all of their customers being without power after the storms of late April, but have restored all residential power by May 6. Currently, BDEC has only 38 meters out which are mostly grain storage and oil extraction sites, but the work on the stragglers may take until the end of the month.

“We’re down to the difficult to get meters.” General Manager Jerry King said Tuesday, “The kind where you work 10 guys all day and get one meter done. We have a lot of water to work around.”

A majority of the out-of-state crews who worked night and day for weeks to restore emergency power to the area were sent home on May 9, and other contractors assisting have had to also move on to address prior contracts and obligations.

“It’s been a challenge but the mutual aid workers needed a break. I’d like to be done, but this is good.” King said.

However, neighboring Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative finds itself with 364 downed meters mostly concentrated in Williams County north of Williston. The projections on the MWEC outage map estimate that some should be restored by the end of this week, with the rest finishing up by May 30.