Storms Cause Power Outages for 1 Million in Midwest, Northeast and Ontario
Storms caused widespread power outages in parts of the upper Midwest and Northeast, and in southern Ontario in Canada, as the region baked in a heat wave late Friday, the authorities and power companies said.
About 820,000 customers remained without electricity in a band stretching from Iowa to New York and into Ontario as of Saturday morning, according to PowerOutage.com, a tracking site.
The authorities blamed downed power lines for many of the outages, which had affected about a million customers on Friday.
The combination of extreme heat and power outages prompted urgent safety warnings.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on social media on Saturday morning that crews were working in the five boroughs to clear roads of trees.
On Friday, he wrote that outages could be dangerous even at night, suggesting that residents without power go to overnight cooling centers provided by the city.
Con Edison, the utility that provides power to most of New York City, said in a statement that thunderstorms had knocked out power to thousands of customers across the five boroughs and in Westchester County, exacerbating the strain on the grid caused by the prolonged heat.
Con Edison said late on Friday that it had restored power to more than 93,000 customers and that crews were working to restore service to nearly 31,000 customers.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey said on social media that severe storms had knocked out electricity across the state’s northern and central counties, and urged residents to avoid downed power lines.
The storms also disrupted several train lines, NJ Transit said. Four lines remained suspended on Saturday morning, it said, and posted pictures of downed trees across tracks.
The police in Warren, a township in New Jersey about 30 miles west of New York City, said that the outage could be long.
“Utility crews have been notified but power restoration is expected to take an extended period of time due to the widespread damage,” the police said in an alert.
The small borough of Alburtis in eastern Pennsylvania declared a state of emergency after significant wind damage, including downed trees and power lines. Crews were working to restore power in the area, the local fire department said on social media.
Michigan’s two largest utilities, DTE Energy and Consumers Energy, sent out crews on Friday night to tackle widespread outages.
One-third of customers had their power restored by Saturday morning, DTE Energy said. It expected that number to be 60 percent by the end of the day.
Nearly 400,000 customers in the state remained without power on Saturday morning, according to Poweroutage.com. DTE serves more than 2 million customers in Southeast Michigan.
It said that it expected 95 percent of power to be restored by Monday. Response teams from out of state and Canada were arriving to speed up restoration.
Severe storms caused widespread outages in Tennessee, too, the utility EPB said on its website.
The storms knocked out power for thousands of customers in the Canadian province of Ontario, the electricity company Essex Powerlines said on social media.
Hydro One, another utility in Ontario, said that crews were still working on Friday to deal with “extensive damage” caused by thunderstorms earlier in the week.
Emmett Lindner contributed reporting.
