SaskPower says more than 100,000 households lost power Wednesday night because of the vicious snow storm that swept through the province.

Tens of thousands were still in the dark the next day.

SaskPower spokesperson Scott McGregor said more than 100 communities have had power outages because of the storm and roughly 78,000 people were still without power as of Thursday afternoon.

McGregor said high winds and blowing snow continued to hamper crews trying to restore power to some communities.

"If someone has to climb a pole or go up in a bucket to repair a bent arm of the transmission line structure, that's impossible to do while winds are gusting as hard as they are in some parts of the province," he said.

McGregor said many of the outages were caused by what is called "galloping lines."

That's when the wind causes power lines to start swinging back and forth, hitting each other.

Since the storm began, SaskPower recorded more than 780 outages affecting more than 100,000 customers.

"The high winds really prevent us from doing aerial patrols. Blowing snow kind of reduces the visibility of our crews being able to go out there and identify lines. Sometimes in order to identify a fault, one of our line technicians will have to climb into a bucket truck and elevate themselves off the ground," he said. "With wind being as strong as they are it's not safe to do so."

McGregor said they should have a better idea of when everyone will be back online once the winds die down.

"I have been in contact with some of our district operators in the southwest area around Maple Creek and they told me that the winds are starting to die down. So they'll be able to start repairs on some damaged infrastructure up there."

SaskPower is reminding everyone to stay away from any downed power lines because they may still be live.

If you experience an outage or see a downed power line or other public safety issues related to power equipment, SaskPower asks that you contact its 24-hour outage centre at 310-2220.