DETROIT — Heavy rains brought flooding to parts of Michigan early Thursday, shutting down some freeways in the Detroit area, as waves of thunderstorms made their way across large swaths of the Midwest.

The storms come as dangerous heat persists in the Northwest, Northeast and the central portions of the country. Heat warnings and heat advisories were in effect for another day Thursday.

Portions of interstates 94 and 696 were closed early Thursday in the Detroit area, along with a stretch of I-696 in Livingston County. The Detroit area has been hit by multiple rounds of flooding this summer.

Damaging winds and falling trees knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of customers. Utilities that had been working to restore power following earlier outages reported more than 700,000 outages in Michigan as of Thursday morning.

Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana also have been hit by recent rounds of storms. Utility poles were broken and transformers damaged in the Fort Wayne and South Bend areas of northwestern Indiana following Wednesday storms.

In Wisconsin, residents took cover Wednesday from a sixth straight day of severe thunderstorms, and at least two tornadoes touched in the west-central and northeast parts of the state. No reports of damage were immediately available.