In some southern, central areas of Michigan, 50% or more customers hit by outages

Hundreds of thousands of residents were left without electricity on Thursday after a winter storm sparked power outages across Michigan, hitting central and southern portions of the state hard.

A mix of snow, rain and ice knocked out power across southern portions of the state. In the city of Hillsdale, the storm knocked electricity out entirely for most of some 6,000 customers of the Hillsdale Board of Public Utilities, a city-owned utility, a city spokesperson said.

As of Thursday afternoon, local utilities were reporting more than 50% of customers affected by the power outages in places like Jackson, Lenawee and Hillsdale counties.

Consumers Energy reported more than 200,000 customers without power, with the majority concentrated in central Michigan, south of Lansing.

Hillsdale County was hard hit, and Consumers reported 89% of its customers were without power, according to outage data from the company Thursday afternoon. In Jackson County, Consumers said 59% of its customers were without power. Electricity was out for 41% of customers in Kalamazoo County and 67% in Lenawee.

"We always try to restore the largest numbers of customers as quickly as we can," said Consumers Energy spokesperson Brian Wheeler on Thursday. "That means we’ll be focused on those communities as we work into the weekend."

More than 70,000 DTE customers faced outages in Washtenaw County and about 4,000 Consumers Energy customers lost power in the county.

Hillsdale County declared a local state of emergency Thursday morning. According to Hillsdale’s Emergency Management director Thomas Whitaker, the county was maintaining local responses. Whitaker said there were roughly 8,000 downed wires in the area. The county was working with local utilities and organizations such as the American Red Cross.

Whitaker said 911 dispatchers fielded between 350 to 400 phone calls between 6 p.m. and midnight Wednesday.

Much of Hillsdale County is served by Consumers Energy, but in the city of Hillsdale, electricity is supplied by the Hillsdale Board of Public Utilities, a city-owned utility company that provides power, water and sewer services. On Wednesday afternoon, the Board of Public Utilities said as of Thursday morning, the utility reported that around 75% of its transmission lines were offline.

As a result of the damage, the utility requested mutual aid, and additional linemen and trucks from Bryan, Ohio; four west Michigan communities were dispatched to Hillsdale to help.

“The Hillsdale Board of Public Utilities (BPU) is currently working to restore power to all of our electric customers affected by yesterday’s ice storm,” said Sam Fry, Hillsdale marketing & development coordinator, in a statement Thursday afternoon.

“Most of our transmission lines went down yesterday evening, which led to a near-total blackout for most of our approximately 6,000 electric customers,” Fry said.

As of 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Fry said they were unable to provide an estimated restoration time for most of their customers “due to the extensive nature of the damage our system sustained.”

“Our linemen and those crews assisting us are working diligently to bring our community back online and we thank them for their efforts,” Fry said.

Whitaker said they opened a 24-hour shelter at the Hillsdale County Senior Services Building, especially geared toward residents without power and who have medical equipment needs such as oxygen concentrators. He expects the shelter will remain open at least through Friday.