Power restoration efforts continue in Mo.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Power outages continued to shrink Sunday despite another winter storm that dumped up to 8 inches of snow across parts of Missouri.

Only about 14,900 homes and business remained without power Sunday morning, down from a high of about 165,000 Tuesday, said Duane Nichols, deputy director of the State Emergency Management Agency.

That includes about 6,200 Empire Electric customers primarily in Joplin, about 5,300 Aquila Inc. customers around St. Joseph and Maryville and about 3,400 customers of electric cooperatives.

"These are diminishing rapidly," Nichols said of the outages. "There are going to be whole pockets that go up today."

But he said it could be midweek or the end of the week before power is restored statewide.

"That's because of isolated pockets that took more severe hits," he said. "The companies have made a genuine effort to get out and get this done."

Nichols said the snow storm, which hit Friday and Saturday, didn't cause additional outages.

"The crews continued to work right on through the snow and continue to work today [Sunday]," Nichols said.

The heaviest accumulations of about 8 inches fell in an area spanning from Moberly to Vandalia, Ill. The rest of the state received from 1 to 5 inches of snow, he said.

Across the St. Louis area and into Illinois, crews on Sunday scrambled to clear roads of often drifting snow.

How much of that snow would stick around was anyone's guess. Forecasts call for a gradual warmup and mostly sunny conditions through the first part of the week, from highs near 40 today to around 50 Thursday. Rains and possible thunderstorms are expected Wednesday.

At least for a few days, "we're looking for nice, clear weather, hopefully," meteorologist Jon Carney said Sunday morning from the National Weather Service's office just west of St. Louis. "We're going to have three days in a row above freezing, so we'll see what we can do about melting some of this snow off."