Behind the Headlines

By Paula Wethington / paula@monroenews.com

The National Weather Service in Detroit has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Monroe County, Mich., at 3:25 a.m. Tuesday June 10. I can see lightning in the west.

In the meantime, still no power at my house on northeast side of Monroe … brownout conditions since 8:30 p.m. Our police scanner batteries are running down - the warning beeps woke me up. So I plugged the unit back in so it can soak up whatever electricity is there. Although we have a rechargeable battery system, that radio is self-contained and when it runs out, it’s off. (We ran into same situation during great blackout of August 2003).

Our bigger concern at this point is the refrigerator and the sump pump. It’s one thing to be out of power for a couple hours; totally a different situation when you start reaching several hours.

One of our neighbors has a generator, so my husband was confused when he got home from work late last night and saw some lights on next door. He soon realized we’ve got limited power.

My husband also noticed some of the blocked roads in the area.

I’m wondering what the downtown area will be like. The Monroe Evening News has dealt with power outages before. We can handle them a lot better at the downtown office (newsroom) than we can at distribution / printing center on Huber Dr.