Powerful thunderstorms with 80 mph winds leave thousands without power in KC metro
Powerful straight-line thunderstorms blew through the Kansas City area overnight, downing trees and power lines and knocking out electricity to tens of thousands of customers.
As of 6:15 a.m. Thursday, about 27,000 customers had no power, according to the electrical utilities that serve the metro.
Evergy reported that 34,503 of its customers across its service area, which includes Wichita, Junction City, Topeka and Kansas City areas. The Kansas City metro accounted for nearly 21,000 of those outages.
Nearly 12,000 of its customers in Jackson County were without power, followed by nearly 4,800 customers in Clay County, more than 2,900 in Johnson County, nearly 300 customers in Platte County and 21 customers in Wyandotte County.
“As of 11:45 p.m., major wind damage was affecting customers in the Salina, Topeka, Lawrence and Kansas City areas,” the utility company said. “We had nearly 110,000 customers without power.”
Restoration efforts were expected to begin as soon as it was safe to work on the outages, Evergy said. It expected delayed restoration times in the Kansas City. People were advised to stay away from downed power lines.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City, Kansas, Board of Public Utilities reported that more than 1,840 customers were without powers and Independence Power & Light had nearly 4,000 customers without power.
The powerful overnight storms packed a punch, with wind speeds between 60 and 70 mph being reported. Winds reached 81 mph in Wyandotte County and upper 70s in Leavenworth County.
The powerful winds destroyed a few small tents and moved larger canopies at the Leavenworth County Fairgrounds and uprooted trees and snapped power poles in other parts of the metro, according storm damage reports to the National Weather Service.
As the storms moved across the metro, the weather service warned in a tweet that 80 mph winds were blowing through the metro.
“Get away from windows, get into the interior of your home, stay inside!” the weather service said on X, formerly Twitter.
This story was originally published August 1, 2024 at 6:58 AM.
