Early morning storm knocks out power for thousands of people in Wichita and Kansas

Just over 1,000 Evergy customers in Wichita were still without power as of 9:40 a.m. Tuesday after a storm rolled in during the early morning hours.

Evergy says the “estimated restoration times are unavailable due to storm activity.”

Most of the people affected in Wichita are in central and west Wichita.

Evergy has 2,123 of its 1,672,396 customers across central and east Kansas and parts of western Missouri without power, according to Evergy’s power map as of 9:45 a.m .

Storms rolled into the Wichita area before 5 a.m., according to the National Weather Service. Between about 5 to 6 a.m., Wichita saw its strongest winds at 15 mph and a gust that reached 28 mph, according to the NWS in Wichita’s hourly observed weather. During that time, Wichita had thunderstorms and “heavy rain,” the NWS said.

The chances of rain and thunderstorms in Wichita taper off throughout the morning and are expected to clear by early afternoon, the NWS says.

Still, crews are working on the outages. Just before 10 a.m., the number of customers with outages in Wichita dropped under 1,000 to 910.

Evergy’s outage map can be found at outagemap.evergy.com .