Severe thunderstorm leaves nearly 10,000 without power in Lorain County

Severe thunderstorms struck Lorain County Wednesday night, with winds exceeding 80 mph and nearly 10,000 residents left without power. The National Weather Service of Cleveland issued both a tornado warning and a severe thunderstorm warning for the county, which expired at 10 p.m. Wednesday. Brian Mitchell, a meteorologist for the Weather Service, said that the winds in Lorain County were some of the most intense in the entire state. "We're getting some preliminary damage reports in general across the county," Mitchell said at around 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday. "The one wind gust we got was a measured gust of 81 miles per hour at the Lorain County (Regional) Airport. That was one of the highest ones we have seen so far this evening." Mitchell said that the damage reports the NWS had received out of Lorain County consisted mostly of power outages and damage from falling tree limbs. "Trees have probably been the most noticeable damage," he said. Mitchell said that the Weather Service had not received any reports of tornadoes touching down in the area, but that he would not know with certainty that there were none until the final damage reports are collected. The worst of the storm had passed through Lorain County shortly after 9 p.m., he said. "The leading edge is the strongest part of the storm, and it is (now) east of the city of Cleveland, stretching down just east of the Akron area towards Canton." As of 9:45 p.m. Lorain County had more than 9,700 households without power, according to FirstEnergy's outage map. The largest outage in the county was in north central Elyria surrounding Cascade Park, where an estimated 1,887 customers were without power. Another significant outage covered Eaton Township and western Columbia Township, with 1,737 customers in the dark. Southwest North Ridgeville was also hit hard, with at least 1,000 homes losing power, and another 500 customers were without power in south Lorain. Lorain County saw the third-most power outages in the state, trailing only Cuyahoga County's 14,000 outages and Clark County's 13,700. A total of 62,000 FirstEnergy customers were without power across the state on Wednesday night. The outages in Lorain County did not have any estimated times for restoration of power listed on the outage map. Mitchell said that with the worst of the storm gone, residents could expect a few isolated thunderstorms on the tail end of the passing weather system, mostly Thursday morning. Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.