More than 24 hours after storms wrecked numerous trees and power lines in Lawrence and Douglas County, some folks were still without electricity, but Evergy said crews were continuing to work to restore service.
Areas of Lawrence saw between 1.9 and 2.3 inches of rain Friday, Kyle Poage, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Topeka, said Saturday afternoon. Wind gusts hit a maximum speed of 62 mph, according to NWS records.
Courtney Lewis, a spokesperson for Evergy, said that after the storm initially moved through on Friday, nearly 10,000 customers in Douglas County were without power. As of Saturday afternoon, crews had restored power to about 85% of them, she said.
“We still have about 1,400 customers who need power restored. We expect to have most of them on yet this weekend,” she said via email Saturday afternoon. “In addition to our Evergy crews, we have contract tree and line crews helping restore power in the areas with outages.”
As of 6 p.m. Saturday, Evergy’s online outage map showed power outages concentrated mostly northwest of Lawrence and scattered throughout town, particularly in the area around Broken Arrow Park in south-central Lawrence.
Poage said Douglas County’s storm chances start to increase again Sunday. There’s about a 50% chance for showers and thunderstorms Sunday afternoon, and potential for some severe weather with winds around 60 mph and hail up to an inch in diameter possible, Poage said. He said that was the highest risk of severe weather for the next few days.
More from Friday’s storm:
Jillian Rodrigue, deputy director of Douglas County Emergency Management, said the department had received a number of reports of tree limbs down, and she had seen some damage to vehicles. She said they hadn’t received any reports of damage to homes, and they are still monitoring for that.
The department released a new form to report storm damage on Friday, just hours before the storm hit. To assist with documenting storm damage, fill out the form at this link. “All reports should be done in a safe manner after storms have passed,” according to DgCoEM.
Emergency Management recommends that each household and business have more than one way to receive severe weather watches, warnings and other vital information so that you can stay ahead of severe weather threats. One way to receive those alerts via text message, email or phone call is by signing up for Douglas County’s free call notification system. Visit dgcoks.org/emalerts to sign up.
Find lots of tips on severe weather and other emergency preparedness on DgCoEM’s website at this link. You can also follow them on Twitter, @dgcoem, and Facebook.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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