By Jon King / jking@whmi.com


More than 154,000 Michigan homes and businesses lost power Tuesday evening after severe storms swept across the state, with thousands of Livingston County utility customers also affected.

High winds, hail, lightning and rain began about 3 p.m. in northern Michigan and moved southeastward through the evening. While there were some strong wind gusts and rain, the heavy storms mostly missed Livingston County, although it was enough to leave approximately 7,500 local DTE customers without power.

Many of the outages are centered in an area across Brighton Township that spans from US-23 to Pleasant Valley Road and Grand River to Spencer Road. So far, the utility is not offering an estimate on when power will be restored.

As of 5:30 this morning, 49,000 customers Consumers Energy customers were without power, with 46,000 DTE Energy customers also in the dark. Great Lakes Energy had more than 4,400 customers without power as of 8pm Tuesday.

The National Weather Service says egg-sized hail was reported in Cadillac. It says the Kalamazoo Battle Creek International Airport recorded wind gusts up to 69 mph.