Emergency responders didn’t get much sleep Friday night, Jan.12, and into Saturday morning as wind-related situations plagued Butler County during a high wind event.

Calls listed on an Butler County dispatch report could be downed trees across a road or utility poles or wires down that knocked out power as a storm system sweeps the nation.

According to reports from the county 911 center, fire and rescue crews from Slippery Rock Volunteer Fire Department were dispatched at 12:15 a.m. Saturday to the 900 block of New Castle Road. Emergency responders spent 15 minutes on scene.

One minute later, Emlenton Volunteer Fire Department crews were sent to the 300 block of Sandy Point Road, where they spent 16 minutes.

The Butler Township Volunteer Fire District was called just before 12:30 a.m. Saturday to the intersection of Eckstein and McCalmont roads. Crews spent 22 minutes on the scene there.

Six minutes later, Harrisville Volunteer Fire Department crews were dispatched to the intersection of Route 8 and Sutherland Road for a report of trees knocked down by the wind. Crews were on scene for almost 30 minutes.

First responders from the Adams Township Volunteer Fire Department spent more than an hour at the scene of a wind-related incident in the 300 block of Stoup Road, where they were dispatched at 1:18 a.m.

East Butler Volunteer Fire Department crews spent two hours in the 700 block of Clearfield Road, where they were dispatched at 2 a.m.

The wild wind continued Saturday morning, when Slippery Rock Volunteer Fire Department was dispatched to Creek Drive.

Wind gusts will continue into Sunday, according to Jason Frazier, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh.

“The wind is expected to last through this afternoon, but this evening it will kind of start to wind down some,” he said.

Frazier explained while winds will continue at 30 to 35 mph, the high gusts excel at knocking down power lines will diminish.

The highest gust recorded at Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport in Penn Township since the high winds moved in, Frazier said, were readings of 47 mph on Friday and 44 mph as of 9 a.m. on Saturday.

Frazier said Old Man Winter will show his frozen face in the county starting Saturday afternoon and continue through Sunday, when temperatures are not expected to exceed 22 degrees.

County residents will not see temperatures above the freezing mark all week, Frazier said.

As for the cold temperatures on Saturday afternoon and through Sunday, Frazier said the steady winds at 30 to 35 mph will put the wind chill in the single digits.

“The single digit wind chill values will be in place pretty much all of Sunday,” he said. “It will feel a little bit better by Monday afternoon, and by a little bit better, I mean wind chills back into the teens.”

Frazier said the wind and cold temperatures are a result of the storm system that affected nearly the entire U.S., dumping snow and sending the mercury into the negative numbers in many states.

“It’s all one big low-pressure system,” he said.

As of 9:45 a.m. Saturday, 1,226 FirstEnergy customers were without power in the county, according to the company’s online outage map.

FirstEnergy is the parent company of West Penn Power.

Of those customers, 928 were in Clay Township in the northern third of the county.

Most of the remaining outages were in the northern part of the county, including Cherry, Brady and Center townships.

A handful of power outages remained in the city of Butler on Saturday morning.

As for Central Electric, 1,411 customers remained without power as of midmorning on Saturday.

Most of the outages among Central Electric customers were mostly in the northern part of the county as well.