Michigan's wind-generated power woes are not over yet.
Major energy providers Consumer's Energy and DTE Energy announced Thursday that more than 800,000 homes and businesses were still without electricity, and many in the dark about when they can expect to get their power back.
Consumer's Energy spokesperson Terry DeDoes says crews have been working tirelessly throughout the week to restore power to the over 320,000 customers facing interruptions, routinely logging 16 hour days. He says while there has been progress, full power is still a few days away.
"Our estimated time to get all those customers restored will be into late Sunday for the hardest hit areas," he said. "We're going to be working all along, just like we have been, restoring customer service."
DTE in a separate statement expressed confidence that 90% of homes should see power by Sunday as well.
DeDoes noted a particularly unusual circumstance contributing to the outages: warm March weather. He says trees and foliage are more susceptible to the high winds when ground is less stable.
"Trees are more prone to fall over when they experience the high winds because it's so warm. The ground is thawed, it was wet, and of course, falling trees will tangle in electric lines and create outages," he explained. "That was a contributing factor to this many customers being affected in this particular wind storm."
He says the outages this week are the worst Consumer's Energy has seen since 2013.
