At least seven tornadoes hit the U.S. state of Michigan as severe storms powered by strong winds killed five people, downed trees, tore roofs off buildings and left hundreds of thousands of customers without power, officials said.

The U.S. National Weather Service on Friday said an EF-2 tornado with a maximum wind speed of 201 kilometers per hour struck Lansing, the state capital, killing one person on Thursday night and injuring three others.

The Enhanced Fujita scale (EF-Scale) rates tornado intensity based on the severity of the damage they cause.

The weather service also confirmed that an EF-1 tornado with winds of 145 kilometers per hour crossed from Ingham County into the western edge of adjacent Livingston County on Thursday night. 

Four other EF-1 tornadoes were reported in Belleville and Gibraltar in Wayne County, and in South Rockwood and near Newport in Monroe County.

A weaker EF-0 tornado with peak winds of 128 kilometers per hour was on the ground for about 3 kilometers in Wayne County's Canton Township, west of Detroit, the weather service said. That tornado caused a tree to fall onto a house, said meteorologist Sara Schultz.

The storms featured lightning displays erupting across the night sky and dumped multiple centimeters of rain on communities across the lower portion of the state.

More than 390,000 customers in Michigan and over 120,000 in Ohio were without power as of about 7:15 p.m. on Friday, according to the Poweroutage.us website.

Thursday night's storms followed a round of heavy rain on Wednesday that left areas in southeast Michigan with over 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.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Friday declared a state of emergency for Wayne and Monroe counties, which makes available state resources to help with response and recovery efforts related to storm damage.

The storms pushed east across Lake Erie and into northeast Ohio, uprooting trees and leaving thousands of homes and businesses without power.

A tornado also tore through part of Cleveland late on Thursday night. Its path was about 137 meters wide and nearly a mile long.

No injuries were reported, but several buildings were severely damaged, including the 143-year-old New Life at Calvary Church that lost its roof. Church leaders asked members to stay away from the building.

Parts of the western United States have been deluged in recent weeks with rain from Tropical Storm Hilary, and much of the central U.S. was beaten down by deadly sweltering heat. In Hawaii and Washington, emergency crews battled catastrophic wildfires.

Scientists say that without extensive study they cannot directly link a single weather event to climate change, but that climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme events such as storms, droughts, floods and wildfires.

(If you have specific expertise and want to contribute, or if you have a topic of interest that you'd like to share with us, please email us at nature@cgtn.com.)