365,000 without power in Michigan after severe storms, scorching heat (2024)

Michiganders faced an array of dangerous weather woes Tuesday that included extreme heat that felt like it was 100 degrees, violent thunderstorms that knocked out power to more than 365,000 homes and businesses, and set off tornado sirens.

"This was the kind of instability we see once or twice a year," Dave Kook, a National Weather Service meteorologist in White Lake Township, told the Free Press later Tuesday afternoon as he monitored storms sweeping the state. "And it's here now."

In addition, to the heat and severe storms, the weather service had warned early in the morning that there was a risk the unusual summer pattern could also bring damaging wind gusts and even the potential for quarter-sized hail.

By 10 p.m., powerful storms had knocked out electricity to nearly 143,000 Consumers Energy customers in northern Michigan and the Grand Rapids area, with the utility promising to "work through the night" to restore it, and an additional 224,000 DTE Energy customers in southeast Michigan.

DTE said on its online "storm update" that the utility was "working as quickly and safely as possible" to restore service and was bringing in hundreds of additional crew members "from outside our area to help speed restoration."

The outages forced businesses like grocery stores to close, various organizations like Scout groups to cancel their night meetings at churches and other public places and left intersections, already more dangerous from the heavy rain, without working traffic lights.

More: Corn sweat could be making Midwest heat wave feel muggier. Yes, corn sweat.

The good news, however, was most Michiganders seemed to be taking the warnings seriously. Some were trying to have a sense of humor about them. And the intense heat in the state, forecasters said, isn't expected to last too much longer.

The weather service heat advisory, which on social media early Tuesday was accompanied by colorful yellow and red graphics, urged taking breaks in shade on job sites, checking on the elderly, sick and those "without AC," never leaving kids or pets in cars and limiting strenuous outdoor activities.

The advisory triggered several school closures and revised class schedules throughout metro Detroit and across the southern part of the state. Detroit schools, which all do not have air conditioning, adjusted their schedules. Eastpointe and Southfield schools did the same.

Several west Michigan school districts, including Grand Rapids, Hudsonville, Portage, Ionia and other communities, also announced closures and early dismissals.

But, some astute observers noted, that likely won’t solve the problem because many kids live in households that don’t have air conditioning or a way to cool off, and they will have to seek refuge in libraries or other public spaces.

Thousands of heat-related deaths

More though than the news of the day, climate scientists are concerned that Tuesday's heat is a sign of a larger — and more harmful — trend, that if more isn't done, will continue to get worse and not only threaten human health but the planet.

Extreme heat is increasingly a threat that health and other experts are concerned is likely to be a problem as climate predictions indicate it to become more frequent and intense in coming decades, with heat-related deaths on the rise in recent years.

And globally, this past June and July were among the hottest on record.

The heat advisory in Michigan was also part of a wider weather pattern that blanketed the central and eastern United States, and recent news accounts reported the unseasonably hot temperatures this week could even break records, ending what, for a few days, felt like early fall weather.

The actual temperature in southeast Michigan, forecasters said, was in the 90s.

But the heat index, how hot it feels, in contrast to what the temperature actually is was closer to 100, and posed all sorts of health risks: heat exhaustion, heat stroke, dehydration, asthma, sleep loss, hospitalization for heart disease and even cognitive impairment.

And while heat deaths can be difficult to track, of those that are, researchers say kills more people nationally than any other weather event.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in 2021, there were 1,602 heat-related deaths, that number went up in 2022 to 1,722, and then, in 2023, to 2,302. With a dangerously hot weather in June, and now in August, that number also could be high for 2024.

Warming lakes, wild fires

In addition to the human health threats, research shows that heat is creating drier conditions leading to warming of the lakes and oceans, melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers, and more active fire seasons, increased aridity of forest fuels.

Decreased moisture in forests in the western U.S. from 1979 to 2015, weather prediction researchers found, led to the doubling of forest fire burn areas from 1984 to 2015, and warmer temperatures are expected to spark even more blazes.

And the fires affect air quality, which also threatens human health.

The concern about extreme weather has been so great as climate scientists warn that hot summers are becoming more common and more intense that more than two dozen groups petitioned the federal government this year to include extreme heat as a qualifying condition for disaster relief.

Forecasters, however, expect the weather to cool off this week and by the next to be be in the 70s.

Still, on social media, most folks seemed to be taking Tuesday's warnings seriously, engaging the weather service to find out more about the risks — especially for tornadoes — and to add to the information, posting their own concerns and quips.

One person encouraged pet owners to leave water "for outside animals."

Another opined: "Too hot for me" with an animation of a woman sweltering under a blazing sun.

And still someone else, who identified in her online profile as being originally from Howell but now lives in the South, perhaps joked: "Just another day here in Alabama." To which, someone else replied: "And that’s why we don’t live in Alabama."

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.