Crews on Saturday were finishing work to restore power to thousands of people in the wake of a two-day blizzard that swept across North Dakota, bringing heavy rain, ice, snow and high winds.

Most of the outages were to customers of Otter Tail Power Co. and Nodak Rural Electric Cooperative in eastern North Dakota.

Nodak President George Berg said the weather Saturday was not cooperating, with wind leading to more outages and the sun not breaking through the clouds to melt ice off power lines. That slowed the work, he said.

"If we don't take time to scrape the ice off the lines, it's likely (the power) will go off again," he said. "Scraping the lines is a real time-eater."

Berg still expected most customers to have power restored by late Saturday.

Otter Tail expected the same, despite rough going for crews, spokeswoman Cris Kling said.

"The Aneta area is so tough," she said. "The fields are so wet. And there's still ice on the lines, and the wind is blowing."

In south central North Dakota the situation was brighter. Crews from Mor-Gran-Sou, Roughrider and Capital Electric cooperatives were wrapping up work to restore power to the last of about 600 homes and businesses in Grant and Sioux counties that lost electricity during the storm.

The heavy rain and snow in eastern North Dakota came on top of heavy rainfall in that region last month. But a spokesman for the National Weather Service said the wet fall weather might not play a part in spring flooding.

Forecaster Pete Speicher in Grand Forks said he could understand why some people might be nervous about the spring, after several areas in eastern North Dakota set 24-hour rainfall records in October.

But Speicher said there are half a dozen factors that could contribute to flooding, including the amount of snow this winter and how fast it melts.

"At this point, you really can't link anything with spring flooding," he said.

The winter storm led to some flood warnings in the east. The weather service late Saturday morning canceled a warning for the Wild Rice River in southeastern North Dakota, but a flood warning continued for the Red River at Fargo. No major flooding was expected.