KANSAS CITY, Mo. (CNN) — Severe weather rolled into the Kansas City metro area overnight and into Saturday (June 2) morning.
Storms featuring heavy rain and strong, gusty winds arrived in the metro around 4:30 a.m.
Severe thunderstorm warnings were issued for several counties on both sides of the state line.
At 5:45 a.m. nearly 70,000 KCP&L customers were without power. Of those outages, a little over 44,000 were in Jackson County, MO, with another 16,300 in Johnson County, KS. There were also around 6,900 KCP&L customers without power in Clay County. Kansas City, Missouri had 26,510 customers without power and over 12,000 were without power in Lee’s Summit.
By 9:15 a.m., 24,582 people were still without power in Kansas City, Missouri.
Shortly after 10 a.m., KCP&L provided the following update:
“We have around 67,000 customers without power, down from a peak of 90,000 customers out this morning. While we are optimistic that we will be able to get a large number of customers restored today, restoration efforts will likely continue past today.”
Shortly after 1 p.m., the outage numbers had dropped to 25,345 people without power in Jackson County, Missouri and 5,287 without power in Johnson County, Kansas.
The strong winds knocked down some trees and branches in Lee’s Summit and Olathe.
“Lee’s Summit got hit hard!” a resident named Evan told KCTV5 News. “I woke up to tree limbs slamming against my house. I ran to the basement with my family and when it passed I looked outside. All of my neighbors were standing outside looking at all the damage. It woke the entire neighborhood up at 5:15AM!”
The winds knocked down many tents that were set up for Downtown Days in Lee’s Summit, causing damage that led to the event being delayed until noon today. It will remain open until 10 p.m.
From the Jackson County Executive’s Office: “Due to overnight storms and power outages at Longview Lake Beach, today’s scheduled Grand Opening and Ribbon Cutting for Rowdy Ribbits has been canceled. Officials are working to determine if the event will be re-scheduled.”
