After two days of storms, nearly 150,000 Michigan energy customers remain without power as of 10:30 a.m. Saturday, May 17.
Most of the outages are in southwest Michigan, according to an outage map by PowerOutage.us. Two tornadoes were confirmed to have touched down in the region.
Both tornadoes were EF-0, the lowest rating a tornado can receive. The first was near St. Marys Lake, north of Battle Creek and east of the Bedford area. The second was near Galesburg and Battle Creek with peak winds reaching 80 mph.
The National Weather Service also confirmed three addition tornados touched down in the Lower Peninsula.
One touched down near Dempsey Road and Walnut Street in St. Charles and another in Atlas near Maple Avenue and Atlas Road received EF-0 ratings.
The third tornado touched down halfway between Stockbridge and Gregory, north of M-106, and received an EF-1 ranking, meaning winds ranged from 86-110 mph.
Nearly 31% of of the 41,000 customers in Kalamazoo County are without power as of 10:30 a.m. Saturday, May 17. In Calhoun County, about 17,000 customers, 27%, are out of power.
Consumers Energy hopes to restore power by Saturday evening, according to its website. People in “hardest-hit areas,” including Battle Creek, Kalamazoo and Muskegon “should have power back by Sunday evening,” the utility company said.
DTE Energy reported 99.95% of its customers had power Saturday morning.
Detroit saw gusts of up to 41 mph Friday night. High winds are expected to continue into Saturday. Grand Rapids saw wind gusts reaching 48 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
Friday night’s storms followed hurricane-force winds that gusted Thursday night into Friday morning and left more than 259,000 electric customers without power.
The National Weather Service predicts the rest of the weekend will be calmer and cooler with wind gusts of up to 30-35 mph Saturday and below average temperatures into next week.
Free Press reporters Jenna Prestininzi and Jalen Williams and Lansing State Journal reporter Sarah Moore contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 150,000 Michigan customers still without power after tornadoes hit state
Reporting by Natalie Davies, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
