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Some Shelby County residents could be without power until Sunday. 

“That is too long for many people,” said Doug McGowen, president and CEO of Memphis Light, Gas and Water.

Power outages the eighth-worst in MLGW’s history

More than a third of MLGW customers lost power when a thunderstorm swept through early Tuesday evening. By noon Thursday, about 30,000 of the utility’s customers — fewer than 10% — were still without power. 

MLGW estimates power outages will last several days

The area is under a heat advisory until at least 8 p.m. Thursday. 

The majority of outages remaining from Tuesday’s storm are in six clusters: Raleigh, Frayser, Berclair, East Memphis, Germantown and Hickory Hill. 

A single circuit supplies power to more than 1,000 customers, and as of Thursday, six full circuits were still out, along with more than 30 partial circuits. Crews are focused on repairing circuits first to turn power on for the most people possible. 

Then, McGowen said, crews will shift to tackle more complex outages affecting individual customers. 

“Please don’t lose hope,” McGowen said. “This has been an unusual series of outages we’ve had.” 

Barrage of storms complicate long-term improvements at MLGW

In the past year and a half, outages have impacted 800,000 customers; that’s the equivalent of every MLGW customer losing power twice. 

That’s also the same number of customers who lost power between 2012 and 2022. McGowen said it’s a sign that aging infrastructure is just one part of a complex problem that’s exacerbated by more severe and more frequent storm-related outages.