DETROIT — DTE Energy made progress restoring power to customers Sunday, with about 44,000 remaining in the dark after the latest storm.
About 220,000 customers initially were without power following a wet and windy storm Friday, with snowfall totals above a half-foot in several Michigan communities, DTE reported.
DTE reported just under 44,000 customers without power Sunday afternoon. The utility's outage map showed most of the outages were in central to southeast Michigan, with the greatest numbers in Wayne and Oakland counties.
Trevor Lauer, DTE's president and CEO, said in the utility's outage update goal for Sunday was to restore power to most of its customers and about 90 schools so districts could reopen Monday.
"Friday we had really heavy snow and winds come back into the service territory after we had the ice storm ... and it's been really hard on our customers," Lauer said.
"As we roll into tomorrow, we'll be down to a very small number of customers: 15,000 to 20,000."
The utility said trees and branches damaged by last week’s ice storm broke from the weight of the heavy snow and ice and fell onto power lines and other equipment, leading to outages. More than 2,000 wires were down, the utility reported.
The National Weather Service said the heavy snow, which cut a swath from Jackson through northern Metro Detroit suburbs to St. Clair and Sanilac counties, broke records in various cities, including 6.2 inches in Detroit, whose record for the date was 6 inches in 1875.
The highest snowfall accumulations extended from Kalamazoo to Lansing and Jackson with 6-10 inches of snow, the weather service said.
The National Weather Service said the snowfall was so intense, up to 3 inches an hour, that "thundersnow" was observed Friday night. The wet snow piled up quickly on trees and power lines, said the weather service.
An ice storm Feb. 22 knocked out power for more than 600,000 customers.
Lauer said such strong weather events appear to be the "new normal."
"We need to continue to invest in our system and harden our system, so we can deal with this new normal of the stronger weather patterns that continue to hit Michigan," he said.
Consumers Energy reported 50 customers without power at Sunday afternoon.
