Thousands of Indiana Michigan Power customers were plunged into darkness Thursday morning in St. Joseph County. Power was restored shortly after 11:00 a.m. in the South Bend and Granger area.

A spokesperson with the power company said a damaged or broken insulator near the Ironwood Road area caused the outage. Initially, just over a thousand were without power, but by 8:00 a.m. that number jumped to almost 3,500. 

AEP was unable to confirm if the outage was initially caused by weather but did say rain can affect equipment.

The outage caused Clay High School in South Bend to close for the day.

About 400 students were already at the school this morning when the power failed.