Ferocious winds gusting up to 100 km/h and volumes of water from precipitation and melting snow created chaos in Gravenhurst on Wednesday, causing power outages and road flooding throughout the municipality.

Hydro One claims as many as 40,000 residents in Muskoka and its surrounding areas were without electricity due to the high-wind storm. Reports Thursday said many residents may still be in the dark by the weekend. 

Daniele Gauvin, a spokesperson with Hydro One, said up to 140,000 homes across the province experienced a power outage during the storm.

In Gravenhurst, Veridian Connections recruited crews from the company’s southern utilities to help deal with downed trees and limbs that damaged hydro poles and lines.

George McEachern, general manager of Veridian Northern District, said at one point all of Veridian’s 6,100 customers in Gravenhurst were without power when the two 44,000-volt feeders that service the north and south ends of town were damaged during the onslaught.

“We were dealing with downed trees and limbs and then the next gust of wind came along and more trees came down on our lines,” said McEachern. “We’re all fighting the same battle.”

About 450 homes serviced by Veridian were still without electricity Thursday morning, staff confirmed.

Gravenhurst town office was swamped with hundreds of calls reporting broken tree branches obstructing roads and culvert failures where flooding occurred.

Manager of public works and operations Dave Saunders said a culvert failure on Cooper’s Falls Road near Cooper’s Falls caused water to run overtop the roadway. It was temporarily repaired with an additional culvert.

A 30-foot section of Sparrow Lake Route D near Baseline Road in Kilworthy was washed out when the culvert couldn’t deal with the volume of water, Saunders said.

“The 1.8 metres of snow we had, which is equivalent to an entire winter of snow, left in three to four days, and then we had rain on top of that,” he said. “It’s a huge volume of water to deal with and as it collects and expands and moves downstream, it brings this energy and velocity and then debris collects and creates impediments in culverts and natural watercourses. It’s a lot of water to move.”

Doe Lake Road also experienced flooding near Tomingas Road and Laycox Road, as did Muskoka Road 169 near Muskoka Wharf.

With files from Jacqueline Lawrence