Metro Detroit woke up Friday to the damage from a Detroit tornado question that the National Weather Service was still trying to answer after Thursday night’s round of severe storms. The agency was on the ground to determine whether the east side damage came from a tornado or straight-line winds.
More than 240,000 DTE customers lost power as downed trees and wind damage spread across Southeastern Michigan. DTE said it had already restored more than 70,000 customers from the two rounds of storms Wednesday and Thursday, while city crews and utility workers pushed cleanup across Detroit and Islandview.
Mary Sheffield on cleanup
Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield said safety was her number one priority and asked for patience while city departments worked together on cleanup. She said, “The safety of our residents is my number one priority, and we have all of our departments working together to clean up our city, to keep our residents safe, and to ensure that we get through this in a safe way,” in a social media plea for patience.
Residents were told they could report storm damage and flooding on the Improve Detroit app, and they were also told to stay away from down power lines and treat them as live. On Friday morning, roadblocks were set up on Vernor and Beaufait because of downed power lines.
Detroit east side assessment
The National Weather Service planned to be on the ground Friday to decide whether the damage on Detroit’s east side was caused by a tornado or by straight-line winds. If the storm was a tornado, it would be the first one to hit Detroit in almost three decades, since 1997.
That difference matters for the record of the event, but the immediate issue for residents was the same: blocked roads, damaged property, and outages that left crews working through the day. The weather threat also was not finished, with a risk of severe weather still possible Friday and damaging winds and flooding rain the greatest threats.
DTE restoration targets
DTE said it expected to restore 65% of impacted customers by the end of day Friday, 90% by the end of day Saturday, and the remainder by the end of day Sunday. The utility said it had 3,400 Storm Response Team members working, including more than 1,000 line workers from outside Michigan.
Localized areas could pick up 1 to 2 inches of rain, which could leave flooded roads in spots as crews kept clearing damage and the weather service kept examining whether Detroit’s east side had seen a tornado or only straight-line winds.
