(Omaha, NE) -- Nearly 8,000 OPPD customers lost power Wednesday afternoon after strong winds cut through the metro.
WOWT 6 News reports that wind gusts were clocked at 48 MPH in the Omaha area. Around 1:30 Wednesday afternoon 7,800 customers were without power. By 2:30, that number was down to about 5,100.
Omaha Public Power District said crews had restored power to nearly 3,000 customers in Blair just before 1 p.m. citing a large tree limb that had fallen into a three-phase power line. A few minutes later, another outage was impacting an additional 2,311 Omaha customers between Military and West Maple roads, from 78th and 96th streets, the update on the OPPD website said. “We have troubleshooters on the way to find the cause,” the statement said.
Other outages OPPD said crews are working on include areas near Levi Carter Park, 84th and Q streets, 96th and Grover streets and 48th and Drexel streets, as well as some isolated areas of Cass County.
The strong winds also caused a number of brush fires in Douglas, Washington and Saunders counties Wednesday afternoon. High wind and red flag warnings are in place through most of Wednesday evening.