BRANCH COUNTY, MI (WTVB) – Two rounds of severe weather on Wednesday knocked out power for thousands in Branch County and led to some street flooding.
The first round of storms featured strong winds and heavy rain as they came in just before 2:00 p.m.. The Branch County Memorial Airport recorded a wind gust of 45 miles an hour as a severe thunderstorm warning was in effect for Branch County.
There were at least a dozen reports of trees and wires being knocked down within 20 minutes following the storm.
Branch County Road Commission crews spent the afternoon clearing roads and streets of fallen branches and trees.
As of late afternoon, nearly 3,200 Consumers Energy customers in Branch County were without power. The Coldwater B.P.U. reported 300 outages because of the storm.
The second round of storms that came in at around 6:30 p.m. featured heavy rain as two more severe thunderstorm warnings were issued for Branch County.
The M.S.U. Extension Service weather station at the Bloom Dairy Farm measured 1.33 inches of rain between 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. after .44 of an inch of rain was measured between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon.
Drivers had to deal with high water at the intersection of U.S. 12 and Michigan Avenue in Coldwater.
Photo courtesy of Eric Cozart
There were reports of trees and power lines down in Union City and M-60 had to shut down by the Michigan State Police as it was almost impassable in spots.
The heavy rain led to a Flood Advisory being issued by the National Weather Service.
There were over 2,700 Consumer’s Energy customers without power Thursday morning in Branch County. Most of the outages are along the state line and in the Tekonsha area.
According to the outage page on the the Consumer’s Energy web site, power is expected to be restored by late Thursday afternoon for most customers.
There were also 2,300 outages in Hillsdale County, about 1,100 in St. Joseph County and just under 2,000 are out in Calhoun County.
Over 24,000 customers system wide were without power on Thursday morning.
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