Heavy rains across parts of have temporarily closed a busy airport terminal outside Detroit, and storms flooded an Ohio highway where people were rescued from their cars.
Areas in southeast Michigan got over 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) of rain by Thursday morning, resulting in street flooding in the Detroit area, including tunnels leading to Detroit Metropolitan Airport in the suburb of Romulus, officials said. Officials reopened the airport’s McNamara Terminal Thursday afternoon.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer activated the State Emergency Operations Center on Thursday evening to provide support to affected communities “as they respond to the impacts of flooding.”
The overnight storms caused power outages across Michigan, concentrated in the Detroit area. Later in the day, after severe storms in the western part of the state, more than 100,000 homes and businesses were in the dark across Michigan, according to poweroutage.us.
“We were getting rainfall rates above an inch an hour, which is pretty significant,” said Brian Cromwell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Detroit.
Cromwell added that more severe thunderstorms with torrential rains were possible over the region Thursday evening.
Up to 8 inches of rain (20 centimeters) also hit some areas of north-central Ohio, according to Brian Mitchell with the National Weather Service in Cleveland. The northeast part of the state saw at least 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) from midday Wednesday into Thursday morning, with winds reaching up to 60 mph (37 kph) in some areas.
Lorain County, which received around 6 inches (15.2 centimeters) of rain, canceled its county fair Thursday due to “storms, flooding, closed roads and damage.”
In Lakewood, Ohio, 10 people were rescued from seven cars on a section of Interstate 90 on Wednesday night after their vehicles got stuck in the water that reached to the windows, Capt. Gary Stone said. The highway was shut down in both directions at one point. No one was hurt.
Scientists say that without extensive study they cannot directly link a single weather event to climate change, but that climate change can make weather more severe.
Other parts of the U.S. are seeing fallout from Hilary. Storms have covered the arid Las Vegas Strip with water.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.