[chiroptera]

My power went out Saturday night. They are saying Saturday before power is restored here. And it is supposed to get into the single digits.

I will manage but what of those with no place to go? All the people who were planning a nice Christmas with kids and grandkids? A house a block from me burned to the ground last night....Thank God nobody hurt.

How frequent are ice storms like this? In 13 years inMichigan I have not experienced this. Never mind a full week without power.

[DTWflyer]

We were supposed to be headed up to my in-laws near Lansing for Christmas but they lost power and its not expected to be back until Friday or Saturday. Now we are hosting improptu Christmas at our house in the Metro Detroit area. No big deal, other than I will be scrambling around tomorrow to get groceries and get the house ready.

This is the worst ice storm I've heard of in a while. Ice storms aren't that frequent in Michigan at least of that severity. The storms that we get are generally either all rain or all snow. Seems like one like this hits part of the state about every decade or so.

[JimmyInGreatLakes]

We've been fortunate in that we still have power as probably 2/3 of the residents in our town are without. We had some major tree damage though, going to lose some shade come next summer. The bright spot in that is that the fence wasn't damaged and we had a great tree company come and clean it up (without damaging fence) for about 1/3 of the price I thought it would be.

[detwahDJ]

Maybe CE cannot borrow manpower from other states because they are experiencing the same weather-related problems. This recent storm is unusually widespread, and winds are not from the north as they usually are. We have gotten the "in-between", change-of-season weather which produces rain during the day, and freezing at night. When winds turn southward this weather will go south.
Answer: it's not common in late December. Churches are opening shelters.
Local news just said "worst in ten years", so it happens.

[teachbeach]

I'm equating it to a winter hurricane. Lots of damaged and lost trees have fallen, taking the power lines down with them. So sad to see the destruction....on the other hand, hotels and coffee shops have been so very accommodating, neighbors helping neighbors...really bringing out the best in a sad situation.

[magellan]

Originally Posted by chiroptera

My power went out Saturday night. They are saying Saturday before power is restored here. And it is supposed to get into the single digits.

I will manage but what of those with no place to go? All the people who were planning a nice Christmas with kids and grandkids? A house a block from me burned to the ground last night....Thank God nobody hurt.

How frequent are ice storms like this? In 13 years inMichigan I have not experienced this. Never mind a full week without power.

We were hit hard in our particular area, and lost power yesterday at about 6:00 am. It JUST went back on again. Consumers was saying Dec. 26th at 12:00pm I think for our restoration time, so thank god it came back on sooner.

I know how frustrating it can be. We normally spend Christmas in Lansing and Saginaw, and it was completely messing with our already stressful plans. Plus, we have a dog, so when the temps in the house dropped into the low 40's, we had to find a hotel that would accommodate dogs.

Godspeed. I hear that temps inside a house drop 10 degrees every 24 hours in this weather without heat, so keep that in mind related to your plumbing. Shut off the main water and drain all the water (run the sinks and flush the toilets) as good as you can, if you don't have secondary heat sources. Don't "tough it out" in your house if the temps are in the 40's or worse. Hypothermia can set in if your body temp drops to just 95, and it might happen while you're sleeping. Find family, friends or a hotel or shelter to stay in.

[snoopygirlmi]

My relatives in Kalamazoo/Battle Creek got hit a lot harder than we did.

By the time we went to church on Sunday morning, the roads were pretty clear. Ice was still on the trees, but that was about it.

[snoopygirlmi]

Originally Posted by chiroptera

How frequent are ice storms like this? In 13 years inMichigan I have not experienced this. Never mind a full week without power.

When I was a kid/lived in Kalamazoo, we got ice storms every so often. I remember one time we had to move in w/my grandparents for a few days because we didn't have any power.

This is the first ice storm I remember experiencing in SE Michigan.

I love Detroit winters in comparison to Kalamazoo winters. (They get a lot more 'weather' than we do here!)

I'll still complain because that's what we do here when it gets too hot or too cold, but I'm always telling my husband that it could be worse. "We could be in Grand Rapids or Kalamazoo getting the lake effect (snowstorms)."

[Giesela]

I remember ice storms fairly often in late winter early spring when i was young, but we didn't lose power, just some limbs or bushes. Same for other big storms, despite not having underground lines I don't remember any power outages.
Seems like power outages are more frequent in general everywhere now for all different types of storms. Lots more people now, maybe the infrastructure is different or hasn't quite kept up, or maybe we just didn't hear as much about outages back then. Maybe it wasn't national news if a bunch of people in some state lost power? IDK
I don't live in MI now but my sister does, I think she got her power back yesterday.
I know here in SW Ohio it seems like anything a bit more than 'normal' weather and the power goes somewhere.

[DTWflyer]

The electrical grid infrastructure is getting older, the trees and vegetation is growing larger all resulting more of these types of outages.

In most cases its the same lines and poles dating back to the 50s, 60s, and 70s.