Strong winds, power outages cause headache for local radio station

Over the weekend, strong winds whipped through our entire region and stripped thousands of people of their electricity, including WELM radio.

For the past two days, the radio station has been keeping the lights on with a generator, but listeners have not been hearing them on their radios like normal.

"We have three radio stations here on a normal basis. Right now, we're only operating on one," said Chip Combs, with WELD. "We're not getting our signal out like our customers are accustomed to."

Because of the power outage, both the station's satellites and antennas are out of service, so WELD-FM and WQWZ are off the air.

"It's been tough," said Combs. "We have customers that we have to satisfy and we haven't been able to do that the last couple of days."

While the outage has been frustrating for the radio group, they are not alone.

According to Todd Meyers, a spokesman with Potomac Edison, more than 60,000 customers lost power due to strong winds over the weekend.

Across West Virginia, over 9,000

still do not have electricity

Meyers expects power to be restored to most customers by Friday, but asks customers to remain patient as crews work.

The radio group also asks their listeners to stay patient.

"If your stove's not on...be patient, it's coming," said Combs. "If your radio is not on...be patient, we're coming."

See a full statement from Potomac Edison below:

"Potomac Edison crews continue to make strong progress restoring customers in Grant, Hardy and Pendleton County following Sunday’s powerful windstorm. Gusts in higher elevations of West Virginia were clocked as high as 88 miles per hour, toppling trees into our lines, breaking poles and cross arms. About 60,000 Potomac Edison customers in Maryland and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia were impacted by the storm, and, as of Tuesday afternoon, about 9,500 customers remained without power. We expect that power will be restored to everyone by late Friday night (March 1). We thank our Potomac Edison customers for their patience as our crews work round the clock to get their lights back on."

You can check the statues of outages through Potomac Edison's website

here