Greater than half 1,000,000 clients nonetheless with out energy in Michigan as temperatures plunge
More than half a million homes and businesses were left without power in southern Michigan Friday night after an ice storm battered the region and officials warned power for many may not return until Sunday.
Across the country, forecasters said a storm would drench Southern California and hit higher elevations with blizzards and heavy snowfall.
Flooding, downed trees and damaged power lines were likely through Saturday morning as the storm swept across the state, the National Weather Service said.
A plow clears snow on Mount Baldy Road in the city of Mount Baldy, California on Friday.Allison Dinner / AFP – Getty Images
In Michigan, nearly 600,000 utility customers were out Friday, according to Poweroutage.us, with outages reported from Lake Michigan to Lake Erie. Over much of the region, temperatures should drop into the 20s overnight and drop into the teens with the wind chill, the National Weather Service said.
Light snowfall was expected across much of the area, the agency said.
In Lansing, city officials initiated a “Code Blue” plan to respond to cold weather, repurposing libraries, community centers and other buildings as heat centers. County officials also opened warm centers in Lenawee County and the Red Cross operated a 24-hour shelter.
Officials urged Kalamazoo residents to prevent frozen pipes by opening cupboards around their lines and running a “pencil-sized” stream of water from a faucet if their internal temperature dropped below 32 degrees.
In Jackson, south of Lansing, resident George Ellis cooked outside on a gas-powered grill while a generator provided enough electricity to keep a refrigerator and space heater running, Lansing-based NBC affiliate WILX reported.
When the broadcaster asked how he and his wife were doing, he answered with a single word: cold.
Garrick Rochow, chief executive officer of the state’s largest utility, Consumers Energy, said Friday that power would be restored to the majority of the company’s customers by Sunday. Rochow described the utility’s response as “all hands on deck” and said 540 crews were deployed across the state.
Detroit-based DTE Energy President Trevor Lauer estimates that 95% of this utility’s homes and businesses will also have power by Sunday.
Speaking to reporters, Lauer described the great winter storm that hit the area as “historic” and likened the quarter inch of ice that fell on the electrical system to a “baby grand piano hanging on those wires.”
Warmer weather is expected this weekend, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees on Sunday.
In California, millions of people were under weather warnings as a major winter storm battered the state with snow, rain and plummeting temperatures.
San Francisco on Friday recorded its lowest temperature on record — 39 degrees, while parts of Northern California that rarely see snow reported several inches or more between Thursday and Friday, according to the weather service.
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In Southern California, the first snowstorm warning ever issued by the National Weather Service’s San Diego office remained in effect through Saturday afternoon. The same warning was issued for the mountains of Los Angeles and Ventura counties for the first time since 1989, the weather service said.
As of 5:23 p.m. local time, between 3 and 6 inches of rain had fallen in parts of Santa Barbara and South Ventura counties, with more rain forecasts and flash flooding described as imminent. A flash flood warning remained in effect until 10 p.m
The storm is expected to hit the Central High Plains by Sunday night, the weather service said.
