NORMAN, Okla. - Mike Bergey is sailing along in his silver sedan with the ‘‘WINDPWR’’ license plate, streaming toward one of the electric windmills he has seeded around central Oklahoma’s prairie, when a warning siren howls out of nowhere.

Wild winds with gusts topping 60 mph blew from the Great Lakes to the East Coast on Thursday, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of customers, disrupting travel and killing at least five people.

Salt River Project has signed an agreement to purchase 100 percent of the electricity generated from the newest wind energy farm planned for Arizona.

Salt River Project has agreed to purchase the entire electricity output of the second phase of the Dry Lake Wind Power Project in northern Arizona.

AUSTIN, Texas - Texas, headquarters of America's oil industry, is about to stake a fortune on wind power. In what experts say is the biggest investment in the clean and renewable energy in U.S. history, utility officials in the Lone Star State gave preliminary approval Thursday to a $4.9 billion plan to build new transmission lines to carry wind-generated electricity from gusty West Texas to urban areas like Dallas.

Wind gusts of up to 100 miles per hour that toppled power poles and damaged nine transmission towers in the Gila Bend area have left 2,300 households without electricity.

DETROIT - Wind gusting more than 60 mph knocked out power to about 413,000 Michigan homes and businesses on Sunday as temperatures dipped back into the 20s and 30s.

Salt River Project has agreed to purchase electrical energy from Arizona’s first wind energy farm to be built about 18 miles northwest of Snowflake.

Scattered thunderstorms accompanied by strong winds pushed through the East Valley on Thursday evening, knocking down power lines and starting a fire.

WASHINGTON - New worries about the environment, technology advances and tax break extensions are empowering European wind energy companies to try their luck in the United States.

Understanding that language is limited in its ability to describe some things, the ancients often used metaphors to speak of the divine. Three of the most common were fire, water and wind. They are three things that can be quite wonderful: a warm fire on a cold evening, water to grow crops, a cool breeze on a hot summer day. They are also things that can become large and uncontainable: a brushfire, a flash flood, a tornado that uproots mighty trees.

Scattered thunderstorms accompanied by strong winds pushed through the East Valley on Thursday evening, knocking down power lines and starting a fire.

A powerful dust storm whipped through the Valley late Thursday, with thunderstorms rumbling in its wake.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and other dignitaries will dedicate Arizona's first commercial-scale wind energy farm Oct. 12 in Navajo County between Holbrook and Heber.

An energy farm designed to use the wind and the sun is starting to take shape in northwest Arizona.

Scattered thunderstorms and high winds swept into the Valley on Sunday, and although the monsoon hasn’t begun, experts say there’s a good chance it will make an early appearance this year.