COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – Severe thunderstorms and high wind gusts swept through Southwest Michigan on Monday evening, leaving tens of thousands of residents without power and causing significant property damage in the Kalamazoo area.
The National Weather Service recorded wind gusts of up to 60 mph in Kalamazoo, the powerful winds uprooted large trees, snapped branches, and downed power lines across the all of Southwest Michigan, with reports of debris entirely blocking major roadways like Oakland Drive in Kalamazoo.
In Branch County, the City of Coldwater and the villages of Union City and Quincy reported downed trees and power poles.
By 9:30 p.m. Monday, Consumers Energy reported that nearly 70,000 customers statewide were affected by the outages, with heavy concentrations in Southwest Michigan.
Calhoun County was among the hardest hit with at its peak 19,221 customers in the dark, followed by Kalamazoo County with 15,742, St. Joseph County had over 4,600 without power, and Consumers said Branch County had well over 1,000 reported outages as of early evening.
According to the Consumers Energy Outage Map, as of this morning more than 1,200 Branch County residents remain without power, 17,000 Calhoun County residents are still without power over 11,000 in Kalamazoo County remain in the dark, and more than 3,800 in St Joseph County.
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