A chain of some powerful thunderstorms over the weekend across the upper Midwest may have given a reprieve from the heat wave gripping the eastern half the country, where hundreds of thousands across Michigan and also Wisconsinare without power while residents clean upthe damage.
The thunderstorms brought hurricane-force wind gusts in two rounds on Friday night and Saturday from South Dakota into southern Minnesota, with a separate cluster of storms stretching across Wisconsin and into Michigan.
“I was so scared, I really thought I was going to die,” Lisa Gast told FOX11.
Gast, who was driving from work to her home in Mountain when the first round of storms moved through, said in her 20 years living in the community about 65 miles northwest of Green Bay she’s never experienced a storm like the one Friday night.
“I wanted to get home to my family,” she said.
As of Sunday morning, more than 564,000 power outages were reported in Wisconsin and Michigan as a result of the severe weather, according to poweroutage.us.
The vast majority of outages were reported in Michigan, where DTE Energy said 375,000 customers were without power as of 6 a.m. on Sunday due to the two waves of severe weather that moved through southeast Michigan Friday and Saturday.
“I know it is very hard and inconvenient to live without power any time, but especially in today’s record heat levels,” spokesperson Heather Rivard told FOX2.