CLEVELAND — High winds are wreaking havoc on trees and power lines across Northeast Ohio on Monday, causing widespread outages across numerous counties.
According to FirstEnergy, around 70,000 customers experienced a power outage overnight. As of 10:38 p.m., the following outages are at:
- Ashland County — 132
- Ashtabula County — 908
- Cuyahoga County — 1,780
- Geauga County — 399
- Lake County — 3,648
- Lorain County — 176
- Medina County — 153
- Richland County — 3,148
FirstEnergy said it has crews working around the clock to restore power to affected customers, but high winds are making repairs difficult.
"Our crews cannot safely operate bucket trucks when wind speeds exceed 40 miles per hour, which can impact restoration times, FirstEnergy said. "In the aftermath of severe weather, our main priority is clearing hazards – such as downed power lines, downed trees and equipment blocking the roads – and assessing the damage so that our line crews can access the site of an outage and begin to safely make the repairs. Our crews follow a formal restoration process after a major storm, during which they typically address outages that restore the largest number of customers before moving to more isolated problems."
There is currently a wind advisory in effect for Ashland, Medina, Stark, Summit, Portage, Trumbull and Wayne counties until 1 a.m. Tuesday. Wind gusts up to 50 mph are possible.
RELATED: Most of Northeast Ohio under wind and winter weather alerts Monday
Cuyahoga County was under a High Wind Warning, but it was canceled around 7 p.m. on Monday.
