Several thousand in Wichita and Kansas City without power after overnight storm

Several thousand people were without power in Wichita and even more in Kansas City after an overnight storm knocked out power across the state, according to an Evergy power outage map.

As of 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Evergy reported 12,434 of its 1,683,228 customers were without power because of 976 active outages. Evergy provides electricity from around central Kansas and into western Missouri.

The Wichita area and Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri areas are the areas with the most customers. Wichita, at 8:30 a.m., had 4,212 customers without power from 399 outages and the Kansas City area had 5,953 from 455 outages.

“As of 6 a.m. Tuesday, power has been restored to about 80% of the 75,000 customers impacted by the storms,” Evergy said. “Many of the remaining outages this morning are tied to damage from the overnight storm system. The most significant damage was in the Kansas City and Wichita metro areas, where high winds downed power lines and broke poles.

“Crews began restoration work as soon as conditions safely allowed and worked through the night. Repairs will continue today until power is restored for all customers.”

Wichita has people throughout most of the city without power.

The National Weather Service tweeted at 1:08 a.m., saying that at 1:05 a.m. the “Wichita Airport just measured a 72 mph non-thunderstorm wind gust!”