While ice-covered branches look pretty, last week’s ice storm in southern Michigan resulted in downed power lines, fallen tree limbs, and widespread power outages.
The combination of snow, rain, accumulating ice, and strong winds caused wires to come down across roads, blew transformers, and broke tree branches which landed on streets, houses, and vehicles.
Over 750,000 electric customers in Michigan were initially without power, many customers for more than two days.
At a time when temperatures were below freezing; the wind chill on one day brought the temperature to 10 degrees Farenheit.
As of 2:30pm today, 175,000+ Michigan customers are still without power.
Almost four days since the ice storm started.
Our local electric providers have been hard at work, with over 4,000 people in the field doing their best in below freezing weather to fix lines and transformers to restore power.
We were very lucky; we had power the entire time.
But folks a few streets from us in our neighborhood weren’t so lucky. Their power was out for two days or more.
Our neighborhood online forum was filled with requests for help and replies of support. We have two warming centers in our community, which many people relied on.
Walking through the neighborhood this weekend, I saw piles of broken tree branches and huge tree limbs on the curb from the storm.
I’m hoping power is restored for everyone before the next ice storm moves through tomorrow.
