Severe storms tore through Southeastern Michigan Thursday night, leaving over 240,000 DTE customers without power and sending crews to inspect damage on Detroit's east side. The National Weather Service is now trying to determine whether that damage came from a tornado or from straight-line winds.
The disruption is being felt in neighborhoods and on streets where roadblocks were set up Friday morning on Vernor and Beaufait because of downed power lines. In Islandview and other hard-hit spots, the scale of the damage has become the immediate question, because the answer could determine whether Detroit just saw its first tornado in almost three decades.
Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield said residents' safety was her top priority and said all city departments were working together to clean up the city and keep people safe. Her appeal came as residents tried to sort out damage, flooding and outages at the same time, with the Improve Detroit app available for reports of storm damage and flooding.
The storm's force was not limited to one burst of weather. DTE said it had already restored more than 70,000 customers who were hit by the two rounds of storms Wednesday and Thursday, and it 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 company said 3,400 Storm Response Team members were working, including more than 1,000 line workers from outside Michigan.
What has not yet been settled is the label attached to the damage on Detroit's east side. The National Weather Service has not confirmed a tornado, and that matters because straight-line winds can leave a battered scene that looks similar at first glance. Another round of storms was expected Friday, with damaging winds and flooding rain the main threats and localized areas potentially picking up 1 to 2 inches of rain.
By the time crews finish the assessment and the lights come back on, the bigger answer may be simple: Detroit was hit hard, and the recovery will run through the weekend whether the damage is finally called a tornado or not.
