Power Outages Affect Region, Could Take Days To Restore In Some Areas

Power outages from a series of storms Tuesday and Wednesday are still impacting the region, with service estimated to take into the weekend in some areas to restore, notably on Old Mission Peninsula.

As of Wednesday night, Consumers Energy was experiencing 4,018 outages affecting nearly 217,000 customers across Michigan. That included almost all of Old Mission Peninsula, with Consumers Energy estimating it could take until Saturday at 10:45pm to restore power on the northern half of the peninsula and Friday night at 10:30pm for much of the southern half. While a handful of Old Mission businesses posted on social media that they were running on generators and could still offer service, a majority of others - including most wineries - posted that they would be closed until power was restored. Consumers customers in some areas near Buckley and in Leelanau County were also projected to be without power into the weekend.

Traverse City Light & Power experienced widespread outages after Tuesday's storm but was able to resolve most of those outages by end of day Wednesday. The utility posted Wednesday that it expected to reconnect later that night two customers on Seventeenth Street who suffered an outage due to tree damage. Approximately a dozen customers on Avenue B and Avenue D were also hit with tree damage, but did not have an estimated restoration time as of Wednesday. A restoration time was also unavailable for four customers in the Eastern Avenue area without power. 

Cherryland Electric Cooperative posted Wednesday that it had restored power to over 10,000 customers who lost power Tuesday and had brought in 28 extra lineworkers to help restore the system. "We moved a lot of trees and replaced a lot of poles," the company posted. Cherryland still had nearly 1,800 customers without power as of Wednesday evening, however. "We have 10 crews out working right now and will continue to have crews working throughout the night," Consumers posted. "If you are currently without power, please plan to be off until tomorrow (Thursday). We promise we will not stop working until we get you all back up and running."

Photo credit: Cherryland Electric Cooperative