(Reuters) – Over 754,000 homes and businesses in Texas, Kentucky and other states in between were without power on Tuesday after storms battered the region over the long Memorial Day holiday weekend, according to meteorologists and data from PowerOutage.us.
Tornado-spawning thunderstorms that swept the Southern Plains and the Ozark Mountains have killed at least 21 people across four U.S. states.
Texas power company Oncor, a unit of California-based energy company Sempra Energy, has the most outages with over 540,000 customers without power in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to PowerOutage.us.
Oncor said it was “currently monitoring and responding to outages caused by thunderstorms producing large hail and wind gusts up 80 miles per hour (129-kilometers per hour) in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and surrounding areas”.
The utility said on its power outage website that it could not estimate restoration times for many customers.
Major outages by state:
State Outages
Texas 592,000
Kentucky 81,000
Arkansas 39,000
Missouri 21,000
West Virginia 21,000
Total Out 754,000
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino, editing by Ed Osmond)
