Royal Oak – Fay Baker lost power during Great Winter Storm I last week and lost it again during Great Winter Storm II on Friday.
She is frosty and not like the snowman.
“It’s pretty unbelievable,” the Royal Oak resident said. “The first one was a nightmare. This one. . .”
She didn’t finish the sentence and didn’t have to. The second storm in nine days knocked out electricity to more than 200,000 customers of DTE Energy, the utility said.
At 2:45 p.m., the utility reported 194,443 customers without power, down from 205,631 at 11:30 a.m., and 91% of its customers were unaffected.
The highest number of outages are in Wayne and Oakland counties, according to DTE outage maps.
DTE issued a statement at 3 p.m. Saturday and said they expect 95% of the 220,000 customers affected by Friday’s storm to have power restored by the end of Monday.
The utility said trees and branches damaged by last week’s ice storm snapped from the weight of the heavy snow and ice and fell on power lines and other equipment, leading to outages and more than 2,000 reported downed lines.
About 3,500 field crew members, including out-of-state crews held back from last week’s ice storm, will continue to work around the clock, DTE said.
Consumers Energy reported 15,543 customers without power at 14.53, down from 15.959 at 11.35, and more than 99% were unaffected.
The heavy snow, which cut a swath from Jackson through the northern Metro Detroit suburbs to St. Clair and Sanilac counties, breaking records in various cities, including 6.2 inches in Detroit, whose old record for the date was 6 inches in 1875.
The highest snowfall accumulations stretched from Kalamazoo to Lansing and Jackson with 6 to 10 inches of snow, the weather service said.
More:These Michigan communities received the most snowfall on Friday
In a Royal Oak neighborhood where 800 homes were without power, a grocery store at the Hollywood Market was buzzing with activity Saturday afternoon. Some customers sought ice for their dead refrigerators. Others sought warmth.
Stephanie Fowler, buying canned goods for an uncertain future, was philosophical about Storm II. Then again, her Royal Oak abode was unsung by Storm I.
“You just try to make the best of it. You can’t do much more than that,” she said.
Fowler said she would stay with a friend, and if the outage lasts a while, she would borrow a generator from another friend.
In another supermarket aisle, Baker said she tried to wait out the earlier power outage, but won’t make the same mistake again. If she doesn’t have power before nightfall, she checks into a hotel. And will ask DTE to pay for it.
“I don’t mind the cold, but this is ridiculous,” she said. “It’s 2022, ’23, whatever. This shouldn’t be happening.”
The National Weather Service said the snowfall was so intense, up to three inches per hour, that thunderstorms were observed in several locations Friday night. The wet snow piled up quickly on trees and power lines, the NWS said.
In addition to wreaking havoc on utilities, the storm also caused lakeshore flooding along the Erie coast, the weather service said.
Detroit Metro Airport was temporarily closed during the storm, and some flights were delayed or diverted. The airport reopened around midnight.
The outages follow a pair of ice storms since last week that knocked out power to more than 600,000 customers.