After weekend storms, some utility customers may be offline until Wednesday

LANSING - About 1,200 utility customers in the Lansing area were still without power on Monday evening, and at least some of them may have to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday to get service restored.

More than 1,000 Consumers Energy customers in Clinton, Eaton and Ingham counties were still without electrical service after waves of intense thunderstorms rolled through the area on Friday and Saturday, according to the utility's outage map. 

A spokesman said the Jackson-based company didn't expect to have everyone back on line until Tuesday night, although many will have power restored sooner than that.

"We had an initial wave of bad weather Friday night, going into Saturday, followed by more bad weather Saturday afternoon and night," said the spokesman, Brian Wheeler. "These were intense storms. We saw high winds. We saw hail in some cases. We saw lightning and thunder. I've heard reports of 70-mph to 80-mph gusts in some areas."

The Lansing Board of Water & Light, which reported about 5,100 customers without power on Saturday night, had restored service to all but one customer by Monday, according to its outage map. 

On Monday evening, DTE Energy's outage map indicated that a few hundred customers were still without power in eastern Ingham County and western Livingston County.

In all, DTE said, about 390,000 customers were still without power on Sunday afternoon,. About 90 percent of those customers should be back on line by the end of Tuesday, but some might have to wait until Wednesday, spokeswoman Cynthia Hecht said.

"The plan is to have (restoration) estimates to all customers this afternoon," Hecht said on Sunday. "We expect to restore about 150,000 by the end of today and another 150,00 by the end of the day (Tuesday)."

Consumers said about 220,000 customers across its service area lost power at some point over the weekend, with as many as 145,000 out at any one time.

The weekend storms snapped tree branches and felled power lines across much of the southern Lower Peninsula, causing widespread outages. Crews weren't able to fix the damage from Friday's round of storms before another line of storms swept through on Saturday.

"Our biggest concern is making sure that people and customers are safe," Wheeler said. "It was a very hot weekend, and we appreciate people checking in on their neighbors and their friends and family."

DTE's Hecht said the weekend storms were the worst of the season and one of the largest weather events since the March 2017 windstorm.

Consumers, DTE and BWL called in crews from others states to help with restoration, although help wasn't necessarily easy to find. 

"One challenge we're facing is that utility companies in neighboring states are experiencing the same weather events we have within the last 48 hours," Hecht said.

On the plus side, linemen and tree trimmers should have decent working conditions over the next few days.

 The weather should be dry and much cooler this week, with highs in the 70s through Tuesday and in the low 80s on Wednesday and Thursday, forecasters said.

Burton Hooker, who lives in the Windsor Estates mobile home community in Dimondale, said he lost power about 2 a.m. Saturday. He was irked that it took all day to get an estimated restoration time from Consumers, he said.

"It didn’t make me very happy," he said. "I'm sitting there with a freezer full of meat and a CPAP (machine) at night, and they were going to survey what they are going to do. They finally came through and said it would be Tuesday evening."

Hooker said his son brought over a generator to help get them through the crisis.

 More:Nearly 13,000 without power in Greater Lansing area as more storms approach

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Contact Ken Palmer at (517) 377-1032 or kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @KBPalm_lsj.