Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

DTE crews are continuing to restore electric service to thousands of customers who lost power during Wednesday night's severe thunderstorms.

The utility issued the following statement Thursday afternoon:

"More than 2,600 Storm Response Team members are working to restore power to affected customers as soon as possible, and there are 800 field team members from outside Michigan on their way now to help speed restoration. We estimate that 80% of impacted customers will be restored by the end of the day today. We know how challenging it is to be without power. Our Storm Response Teams are working as quickly and safely as possible to restore power to everyone impacted.

"Please be safe and remain at least 25 feet away from downed power lines or anything in contact with them. Assume any downed line is live and dangerous. And please remember to report your outage to receive restoration updates."

DTE's outage tracker is linked below.