Michigan Power Line Work Continues, California Gets a Breather

Some Michigan residents experienced a fourth straight day of dark Sunday as crews continued to work to restore power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses in the Detroit metropolitan area following last week’s ice storm.

Meanwhile, California had a brief break on Sunday after a severe storm that raised Southern California rivers to dangerous levels on Saturday and brought snow to low-lying areas around Los Angeles.

The sun came out Sunday in Southern California, where the mountains north and east of Los Angeles were covered in white after snow fell up to 1,000 feet (305 meters). Closer to sea level, days of rainstorms raised rivers to dangerous levels and flooded roads.

In hard-hit southeast Michigan, still reeling from last week’s ice storm and high winds, the state’s two major utilities — DTE Energy and Consumers Energy — said more than 210,000 homes and businesses were left without power as of Sunday afternoon. electricity. The majority, about 173,000, were DTE customers, with Consumers Energy reporting that about 37,000 of its customers were left without power.

Both utilities said they still hope to have the lights back on by Sunday evening for most of their affected customers.

DTE Energy spokeswoman Cindy Hecht said some utility customers have been without power since Wednesday, but she doesn’t know how many homes and businesses have found themselves in such a predicament.

She said efforts to restore power had taken a long time due to the large number of damaged power lines, including individual lines that connect individual homes to the grid.

An ice storm on Wednesday covered lines and trees in half an inch (1.27 centimeters) or more of ice, followed Thursday by strong winds that sent about 600,000 DTE customers into darkness at the peak of the storm. Hecht said it was the second-highest number of outages DTE has ever experienced, following a March 2017 hurricane that cut power to about 800,000 of its customers.

The story goes on

“The icing we’ve had this week is the equivalent of a hurricane for onshore utilities. It was the amount of ice and the strong wind — the wind and the amount of ice built up on the lines and branches,” she said.

Hecht said utility meteorologists are monitoring another storm system that will move into Michigan on Monday and the utility is “ready to respond.”

“For now, we expect the system to bring a potential winter mix and freezing rain tomorrow, as well as wind gusts up to 45 mph on Tuesday,” she said in a statement.

California had only a brief break in winter weather, with rain and snow returning to the upstate on Sunday as the first of two more storms began to approach. Blizzard warnings go into effect at 4 a.m. Monday and will last until Wednesday for most of the Sierra Nevada, where crews were still clearing mountain roads after last week’s ice storm.

“An extremely dangerous and near-impossible mountain journey is expected due to heavy snowfall and high winds,” the Sacramento office of the National Weather Service warned on Twitter.

More than 67,000 utility customers in California were left without power after days of high winds, downed trees and downed wires, according to PowerOutage.us.

Days of downpours dropped nearly 11 inches (28 centimeters) of rain in the Woodland Hills area of ​​Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, and almost 7 inches (18 centimeters) in Beverly Hills.

Rare mountain blizzard warnings and massive flood sightings ended late Saturday night. But Interstate 5, the West Coast’s main north-south highway, was closed due to heavy snow and ice at Tejon Pass through the mountains north of Los Angeles.

Content Source

News Press Ohio – Latest News:
Columbus Local News || Cleveland Local News || Ohio State News || National News || Money and Economy News || Entertainment News || Tech News || Environment News

Related Articles

Back to top button