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August 22, 2003Lightning, wind rock the regionDowned trees, power outages among falloutByRecord-Eagle staff writer TRAVERSE CITY - It wasn't just rumbling and booming thunder that jolted Marian Hanson early Thursday. A huge tree fell outside the Traverse City woman's house - and across power lines and atop her new car - during the violent storm that swept through the region. "It was very amazing," said Hanson, who lives on Seventh Street. "I thought it was just a thunderclap right over the house. "But when I looked outside I saw it was a lot worse than that. ... There were hot lines lying all over the place." Thousands of area residents lost power after a strong line of pre-dawn storms rumbled through. Lightning strikes and downed trees were blamed for much of the trouble, which was scattered across several counties in the Grand Traverse region. Most of the electricity was back on by mid-morning, according to area utilities, although isolated locations didn't have power restored until late afternoon. Close to 1,500 Cherryland Electric Cooperative customers lost power, including pockets in Garfield Township west of Traverse City, in the Suttons Bay and Omena area of Leelanau County and in the High and Spider lakes areas east of Traverse City. There were also scattered outages near Cedar, Interlochen, Copemish and Thompsonville. "Most of it was from lightning," said Bill Garey, scheduling supervisor for Cherryland. Consumers Energy had close to 1,000 customers without electricity in areas of Grand Traverse, Leelanau, Kalkaska and Antrim counties. "It was widely scattered, storm-related stuff," Consumers spokesman Tim Pietryga said. The storm also knocked out 911 emergency telephone service in the South Boardman area, according to the Kalkaska County Sheriff's Department. The local fire department was put on standby at the fire station there while the system was being repaired. The west side of Traverse City also lost power at around 5:45 a.m. Traverse City Light and Power officials didn't know how many customers were affected, but said the outage spread through the northwest part of the city because of a damaged circuit near the new substation on Hall Street. Most city residents had power restored by 8:30 a.m., said Mark Rollenhagen, operations manager for the city utility. The outage also knocked out several traffic signals on the west side and south of the city during the morning commute, although no major traffic mishaps were reported by local law enforcement agencies. "Everything went pretty smoothly," city police Capt. Steve Morgan said. The storms, which continued later in the day, were spurred by a strong cold front which moved through late Thursday that forecasters said will usher in cooler, drier conditions for the weekend.
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