A second round of severe winter weather is expected to hit the region tonight, bringing more freezing rain and eventually up to 5 inches of snow.
In addition to the 800 Kentucky Power line employees, foresters and assessors working the first storm, an additional 300 people are traveling Sunday to be in place if additional outages occur.
Outages peaked late Thursday morning with nearly 25,000 customers out of power. Since that time or within 48 hours, more than 45% of customers who lost power have been restored. Currently, there are approximately 13,600 KP customers without power.
If the weather materializes as forecasted, officials say it could be a week-long restoration event with very difficult working conditions.
Residents have been strongly encouraged to anticipate losing power and prepare an emergency outage kit. A state of emergency has been declared in Rowan County, and officials are asking residents to stay off the roads this evening unless there is an emergency.