GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (May 12, 2014) — Thunderstorms rolling through West Michigan Monday morning contained enough cloud-to-ground lightning to cut power to thousands of Consumers Energy customers.
Estimates of more than about 100 strikes per minute were seen throughout much of the morning. The most intense activity was from Kent, Ottawa, and Ionia counties to the north, also some strong storms also affected areas near Bronson and Coldwater in Branch County.
At their peak, more than eight thousand outages were reported in the Consumers territory in lower Michigan, with about half of those in Kent County. Pockets of Grandville, Wyoming, and the Cedar-Rock area of northern Kent County were among the hardest-hit locations. Additional widespread outages occurred around Jenison & Hudsonville in Ottawa County, and near Portland in Ionia County.
Here is the Consumers Energy outage map in those areas, captured around 9:15 A.M. Monday:
Scattered showers and storms will continue to be possible throughout much of the day; you can check out interactive radar and the full forecast on the Weather page.
Photo above: Lightning strikes near the Muskegon pier Monday morning. (Doris Stone)
