BATON ROUGE - Weather experts say icy conditions in Baton Rouge will begin to thaw on Wednesday (Feb. 17) as temperatures, though still causing chilly 'sweater-weather,' start to rise.

This is good news for the thousands of Louisianians who have braved freezing weather conditions without electricity in their homes since Monday morning.

Demco has deployed a vast number of workers to help restore power to the area and Entergy also says it has more than 2,000 representatives attending to restoration efforts. As of 5 a.m., Wednesday these efforts are needed to bring electricity to nearly 27,000 in East Baton Rouge Parish. 

Even more customers found themselves in the dark and without heat on Tuesday night when Entergy abruptly cut power to thousands for about two hours. 

The company says it was forced to do so due to "as a last resort and in order to prevent more extensive, prolonged power outages that could severely affect the reliability of the power grid."

Click here to read more on the unexpected outage and the power company's explanation. 

As of Wednesday morning, power has reportedly been restored to more Baton Rouge residents and restorations are expected to continue into the evening. 

WBRZ will continue to monitor outages and update viewers as major changes occur.  

For the latest updates on Entergy's restoration efforts, please visit this link: https://www.entergy.com/view-outages/ and click “Louisiana.” Then, click the red bar at the top for the most recent information, including estimated times of restoration.