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(Photos: DTE Energy)
Crews from New York, Missouri and Tennessee are helping utilities restore power in Michigan, where over 400,000 customers remained without as of early Friday due to thunderstorms and strong winds that swept through the area.
DTE reports 252,255 outages remain "two of the most severe and quick-moving storms to hit our communities in years," it tweets, and Consumer Energy had 157,000 customers without power.
"We are aiming to restore power to most homes and businesses by late Saturday night and finish almost all the restoration work by the end of the weekend," Consumers Energy says on its site.
► Update: DTE says nearly 90% of customers -- -- all but 225,300 -- had power by 1 p.m. today and it expects that around 95 percent will be back to normal by the end of Sunday. "For specific estimated restoration times, please visit our outage center," the company posts.
More than 1,800 DTE employees, along with another 1,000 linemen from out-of-state, are working 16-hour shifts, the utility says.
Consumer Energy has about 2,000 workers around the state helping to restore power.
