Thunderstorms and Heat: Millions Without Power in the Midwestern USA

More than eight million people in the Midwest of the USA were under a severe weather warning on Tuesday evening due to severe thunderstorms. After thunderstorms and extreme heat plagued the region all day, approximately 380,000 power customers in Michigan were without power. Affected customers were in more than two dozen counties within the state, as reported by the tracking site poweroutage.us. Over 200,000 of these customers receive their electricity from DTE Energy in Detroit. The company attributed the outages to the severe storms and brought in an additional 800 workers to restore the grid. The severe weather warning from the National Weather Service included not only Michigan but also Illinois and Indiana and extended to Chicago. In the morning, the Minnesota State Fair already postponed its opening hours by two hours to assess damage from strong winds and rain. Simultaneously, the region is grappling with an intense heatwave that is expected to persist for several more days. According to a weather warning issued on Tuesday, parts of the Midwest, the Southeast, and the mid-Atlantic are expected to experience temperatures 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit above average. Several school districts in Michigan ended their classes early on Tuesday due to the extreme heat.