Blowing snow plastered Unalaska on Wednesday. (Annie Ngo/KUCB)

Unalaskans woke up to wet snow blowing sideways Wednesday morning -- and an island-wide cell phone outage.

GCI spokesman David Morris says that’s because the company’s satellite dish on Haystack Hill is getting plastered with snow.

"And even though we have deicers and heaters, it’s just not keeping up with the conditions," Morris says. "So what we’re doing is, we’ve repeatedly dispatched someone to go clean the dish out. And now I think we have a person just stationed there. That’s all they’re doing."

Morris says it's helping, although the service is still spotty. It could take a few tries to make a phone call go through.

Weather is a perennial problem for Unalaska and other towns that still rely on satellite dishes for cell phone service. 

In the long-term, the solution is to get rid of the satellites and switch to a fiber-optic or microwave connection. Morris says GCI is interested in doing that, but it’s expensive and could be years off. In the meantime:

"The only thing I can say is hang in there, and the weather is eventually going to clear up and you’ll be able to make your phone calls," Morris says.

According to the National Weather Service, Unalaska may see gusts of up to 50 miles per hour before the wind and snow die down tomorrow morning.