India, July 4 -- Strong storms moving through Lower Michigan left tens of thousands of people without electricity on Friday, with some of the biggest outages reported in Mid-Michigan. As of Friday evening, about 180,000 customers of Consumers Energy were without power, according to the utility's outage map.

Areas south of Lansing and stretching toward Jackson were among the hardest hit. The storms also prompted weather alerts across parts of the state, including Ingham County, which was briefly placed under a tornado warning before it expired. As crews began assessing damage, restoration work got underway across affected communities.

The largest concentration of outages was reported in parts of Mid-Michigan, where strong winds and storm...