MLGW Outage Map Today: Memphis Power Outages & Restoration Updates

At 2:03 on Sunday morning, 111,111 MLGW customers were still without power — just over a quarter of everyone the utility serves.

Saturday evening’s storms took out around 130,000 customers at their peak. Memphis Light, Gas and Water is telling people to plan for a multi-day recovery, and the utility’s own estimate is that most customers will be back by Thursday evening.

Here is where it stands, why it happened, and the order MLGW restores power in — which is the part that answers “why is my street still dark”.

How many people are without power in Memphis right now?

111,111 as of 2:03 a.m. Central on Sunday 23 August, on PowerOutage.us’s tracking of MLGW.

That last pair is the clearest measure of how concentrated this is: of every customer without power in Tennessee at that moment, all but a few hundred were in Shelby County.

This number is moving. MLGW had more than 30 contractor crews joining its own staff overnight, so by the time you read this it should be lower — check the live figure rather than trusting the one above.

Where is the MLGW outage map?

MLGW publishes it at mlgw.com/residential/outagemap, and the live map itself sits on a separate host at outagemap.mlgw.org.

One warning about finding it: mlgw.com returns a normal-looking page for URLs that do not exist, including plausible guesses like /outages. If the page you land on is titled “Memphis Light, Gas and Water - Error”, you have hit that fallback rather than a real page. The verified links are in the sources table at the bottom.

To report an outage rather than look one up, MLGW has a separate page for that, also linked below.

What caused the Memphis power outage?

A bow echo — a line of storms that bows forward and produces damaging straight-line winds. Not a tornado. MLGW President and CEO Doug McGowen said the system produced strong straight-line winds, the utility confirmed gusts over 70 mph, and as of Saturday night no tornado had been confirmed.

The National Weather Service in Memphis had Shelby County under severe thunderstorm warnings from 5:36 p.m. Central, with flood advisories on either side of them. The 5:44 p.m. warning is the one that reads like an explanation of the outage map:

At 544 PM CDT, a severe thunderstorm was located near Collierville, moving east at 35 mph. HAZARD…70 mph wind gusts. SOURCE…Radar indicated. IMPACT…Expect considerable tree damage. Damage is likely to mobile homes, roofs, and outbuildings.

The places it named include Memphis, Germantown, Collierville, Cordova, Southaven, Horn Lake and Olive Branch.

When will power be restored?

MLGW’s estimate is that the vast majority of customers will be restored by Thursday evening, and the utility has been explicit that this is early and provisional.

Its statement on Saturday: “We are still doing assessment to understand the extent of damage, but from what we know now, our customers should expect this to be a multi-day recovery, with the majority of customers expected to be restored by Thursday evening based on early assessments.”

McGowen put the same estimate in his own words at Saturday evening’s press conference, stressing that the timeline may change as crews get a better picture of the damage.

What order does MLGW restore power in?

This is the question behind most of the frustration, and MLGW has answered it plainly.

1. Critical infrastructure first — hospitals, water treatment plants, wastewater facilities.
2. Then the biggest wins — the circuits where one repair restores electricity to the greatest number of customers.

Which means a repair that brings back four hundred homes gets done before one that brings back six, regardless of who lost power first. If your street is small and your neighbourhood’s damage is isolated, you are structurally near the back of the queue.

There is a physical constraint underneath it too. MLGW’s own guidance is that replacing a single power pole takes a crew an average of eight hours, and often requires closing roads and coordinating with police. That is not a number about this storm; it is why a multi-day estimate is a multi-day estimate.

Will Memphis schools be closed?

MLGW said it aimed to have a clearer assessment of individual schools by Sunday evening so that families and staff could plan.

McGowen’s framing on Saturday: “It’s fair to say that for schools that are out of power, some of them will be interrupted next week and have to make some alternate plans.” No closure list had been published at the time of writing, and MLGW does not make that decision — districts do.

What should I do while the power is out?

MLGW’s standing advice during storm restoration is the ordinary set, and two items matter more than the rest right now:

• Stay away from downed power lines and fallen trees. Saturated ground means more trees come down after the storm has passed, not just during it, and a line under a fallen limb can still be live.
• Report your outage rather than assuming MLGW knows. A map is built from reports; an unreported outage on a small circuit can stay invisible.

Was there a tornado in Memphis?

Not confirmed. MLGW attributed the damage to straight-line winds from a bow echo, and said on Saturday night that no tornado had been confirmed. Straight-line winds over 70 mph will bring down mature trees and take out distribution lines without any tornado being involved.

How many MLGW customers are there?

PowerOutage.us tracks 426,855 MLGW customers, which is the denominator behind the 26.03% figure. At the peak of around 130,000 out, more than a quarter of the system was dark at once.

Sources