Kentucky and Michigan power outage maps: Thousands affected by thunderstorms and tornadoes
Intense storms, including tornadoes and hurricane-force winds, left thousands in Kentucky and Michigan without power.
Thousands of people across Kentucky and Michigan were left in the dark late Thursday and into Friday, 16 May, as a series of intense storms, including strong tornadoes and hurricane-force winds, battered both states.
In Kentucky, multiple rounds of severe weather began Thursday night and are expected to continue through Friday evening. Large hail, damaging winds, and the potential for strong tornadoes remain a concern. After a rough start Friday morning, another round of storms is forecasted to strike in the evening.
As of 2:30 AM EDT on Saturday, approximately 166,000 customers across Kentucky remained without power following the powerful storms and tornado activity. The western part of the state bore the brunt of the outages, with Marshall County reporting 9,886 customers without service and Union County facing 3,095 outages, per PowerOutage.us.
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In Central Kentucky, Madison County had 2,513 customers in the dark, while nearly 4,000 were affected in Spencer County around midnight.
Michigan hit by heavy storm, thousands without power
Meanwhile, strong storms already swept through Michigan's southwest region late Thursday night. Winds nearing hurricane strength accompanied the thunderstorms, wreaking havoc and causing power outages.
PowerOutage.us says more than 258,000 customers across Michigan lost electricity, with the heaviest impact reported in Battle Creek and Kalamazoo.
Wind gusts reached 75 mph in Battle Creek, while Kalamazoo saw gusts of 66 mph. Lansing and Grand Rapids weren’t spared either, recording wind speeds over 60 mph.
“It felt like something out of a movie,” one resident of Battle Creek expressed on X. “You could hear the wind howling, and then everything just went dark.”
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By Friday evening, DTE Energy reported roughly 2,300 customers without power in southeastern areas such as Ann Arbor, Flat Rock, and Adair. Consumers Energy, responsible for much of the state's energy distribution, indicated around 1,000 customers were still without power in Plainfield as of late Friday morning.
For further info, see the outage map here.
