Strong storms with winds as high as 90 miles an hour and accompanying rain hit Clinton County and Indiana late Thursday afternoon. Damage was widespread in Frankfort and Clinton County. However, no injuries were reported.
“It was calls for state highway, calls for Frankfort Utilities, calls for county highway for trees down and limbs and things,” said Clinton County Sheriff Rich Kelly. “We had to give them a break by trying to keep all the miscellaneous radio traffic off the air and emergency traffic for our dispatchers.”
Some of the storms toppled semitrailers on highways and blew tree limbs into power lines and onto houses and cars, causing sporadic damage according to several news outlets.
Duke Energy has restored power to more than 108,000 customers who were affected by the severe and damaging storms that ripped through Indiana Thursday. Winds as high as 90 miles an hour in some areas resulted in more than 202,000 power outages. Approximately 94,200 remain out of service as of early Friday morning.
The storm caused outages in nearly all of the 28 districts Duke Energy serves in Indiana, particularly in the Western and South-Central parts of the state.
Strong storms buffeted Indiana and Illinois Thursday with winds gusting as high as 70 mph, cutting power to more than 400,000 customers at times.
The National Weather Service said it measured a 70 mph wind gust near Indianapolis International Airport at 3:47 p.m. EDT.
Shortly before 6 p.m. Thursday, Ameren Illinois reported more than 175,000 customers without service, Duke Energy tallied more than 147,000 customers in central and southern Indiana in the dark, AES Indiana said more than 49,000 customers in the Indianapolis area had no power, and City, Water. Light and Power in Springfield, Illinois, tallied more than 34,000 customers without service.