The high winds couldn’t have picked a worse time to topple a tree on Lane 7 northwest of Powell and take out a power line as far as Mary Lou Cummings was concerned.

Tuesday evening at 5:15, Cummings had a houseful of guests and a lasagna in the oven. More arrivals were imminent, but she quickly phoned those on the way and told them to turn around and go home. Still, she was trying to play hostess in the dark.

The power outage was the result of a cottonwood tree pushed past its limits by the roaring winds. The National Weather Service in Riverton recorded wind gusts of 60 mph at 4:45 p.m. at the Powell Municipal Aiport — and sustained wind speeds of 46-49 mph most of the evening and into the night.

“High winds are creating a lot of issues for us right now,” Molly Lynn, manager at Garland Light and Power, said Wednesday morning; the company services the area that experienced Tuesday’s night outage. The downed tree was in the area of Lane 7 and Road 12.

“But we had help,” Lynn said. “The fire department and the county sent crews to remove the tree from the road for our guys.”

A second line went down near Lane 8 1/2 and Road 6 and trees also fell on Lane 10 and Lane 5, according to DelRay Jones, Powell district foreman for Park County Public Works Road and Bridge division.

“There was a big tree across Lane 7. The trunk took down the power lines,” Jones said. Garland Light and Power shut off the electricity “so we could get in there and cut it up, then we pushed it with a loader to clear the road,” Jones explained. He and his crew, Rowdy Briggs and Chris Carter, were on the scene for about an hour before heading off to clear the trees from lanes 5 and 10.

Meanwhile, crews from Powell Volunteer Fire Department were also busy with numerous calls, some involving the power outages.

Three trucks were at the Lane 7 scene, one providing fire protection in case the live wires started a ground fire — which could have been treacherous in the howling wind. Two other units were running traffic protection, keeping vehicles out of the area for their own safety and that of the linemen working on the outage.

“We knew it was close,” Cummings said. “We could see the lights on the trucks.”

The Garland Light and Power line crew — Steve Reimer, Todd Lawson, Josh Serr and ground man Jason Fields — were working on the repairs in the wind, peppered with some blowing snow. It took about three hours for the 156 households affected by the outage to have their power restored.

Cummings took it all in stride, in spite of an uncooked lasagna.

“We used the barbecue and I have a gas range, to boil and barbecue something. We still pulled off Italian night,” she said. “We worked and ate by romantic candlelight.”

The time prior to the delayed supper being served was put to good use, too.

“We prayed a rosary before we ate,” Cummings said, adding, “It [being out of power] puts you in mind of how bad we could have it. We prayed for the world, with this COVID going on.”

The family and guests had just settled down after eating when the lights came back on. The lasagna, she said, was going to be used for lunch on Wednesday.

The National Weather Service is not forecasting a replay of the high winds in Park County, at least through the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Jones’ road crew was using Wednesday to cruise the impacted area and clean the remainder of the downed trees from the county rights-of-way.