CALIFORNIA (Reuters/The Hill) – More than 450,000 Michigan locations remained without power following an ice storm that brought freezing temperatures to the state.
The power-outage tracking website poweroutage.us reported that more than 470,000 customers, mostly in the Southeastern part of the state where the storm hit, are experiencing outages as of Saturday morning.
Wayne County, which is home to Detroit, has the most reported outages with more than 170,000, while Hillsdale County has a higher level of outages than any other county, with more than 65 percent of the 21,000 customers tracked experiencing an outage.
The storm that hit the state earlier this week coated power lines, utility poles and tree branches with ice up to three quarters of an inch thick and knocked out power for as many as 820,000 customers. Officials have been working to restore power, lowering the number without electricity to 600,000.
But thousands of residents are dealing with ice-cold temperatures in the meantime without access to heat. Light snow is expected to continue in the Detroit area, accumulating up to an inch.
At least one death in Michigan has been reported. A firefighter died on Wednesday after coming into contact with a downed power line.
Winter storms have also hit the West Coast of the United States hard this week, from Southern California up through Portland, Ore. A blizzard warning was issued for Los Angeles County for the first time since 1989 as the National Weather Service predicted that areas of high elevation could receive multiple feet on snow, making travel in the Los Angeles area “impossible”.
Portland is still facing icy roads that are expected to thaw on Saturday after receiving its second-heaviest snowfall ever earlier this week of almost 11 inches.
Nearly 85,000 households and businesses were without power in the Los Angeles area on Saturday, as storms continued to pummel parts of California, bringing snow to higher elevations and dumping rain and hail in the flatlands.
Interstate 5, the largest highway leading north out of the city, remained closed at the steep grade known as the Grapevine due to heavy snow, while several more southern points of the freeway in and around Los Angeles were closed due to flooding, the California Department of Transportation said.
The next set of storms will bring wind gusts of up to 50 miles per hour (80 kph) in the Sacramento Valley, and up to 70 miles per hour in the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains. Yosemite National Park was closed through Wednesday due to severe winter conditions.
A massive low-pressure system driven from the Arctic was responsible for the unusual conditions, said Bryan Jackson, a forecaster at the NWS Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.