Severe thunderstorms rocked the WCSR listening area Wednesday afternoon & evening, bringing down trees and knocking out power to thousands of customers in Hillsdale and Branch Counties. .
The National Weather Service issued a Thunderstorm Watch late Wednesday Morning. Thunderstorm Warnings were issued around 1:30 and again around 5:00 PM.
Consumers Energy reported about 6,000 customers without power in Hillsdale & Branch Counties at the height of the outage.
Crews are continuing to work on restoration efforts today. They’re expecting to have most local customers restored by the end of the day today.
Hillsdale County Emergency Management & 9-1-1 Director Thomas Whitaker told WCSR News, Despite bringing down branches & power lines, no significant structural damage was reported from the storms.
On a related note: Whitaker said the company that provides the Rave Alerts text alerting system is working to restore service. He said the Alerts were not issued for Wednesday’s storms because the company’s services were not included in the National Weather Service’s warning system.
They’re working to determine how that happened–and how to solve the issue.