7000 homes and businesses lose power in storm | News

CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - About 7000 Duke Energy electric customers, 4200 of them in Butler County, lost power Thursday night after a line of storms moved across the Tri-State. 

Most of the outages were reported in the north and northeastern parts of the county, with Duke reporting two outages at 9:00 p.m. that were above 1000 customers and another between 250 and 1000, with numerous smaller outages scattered around the northeastern quarter of the county and in West Chester near the Hamilton County line. 

Middletown Police dispatch heard of a number of outages in the southern end of town, with traffic lights out at some major intersections.  Hamilton had few problems if any, but county dispatchers said there were outages north of Hamilton at New Miami and Seven Mile. 

FOX19 meteorologist Steve Horstmeyer says there was a short period with heavy winds and lightning when the storms moved in.  A trained spotter in Butler County south of Monroe reported at estimated 50 mile an hour gust to the National Weather Service, and a wind gauge at Dayton International Airport northwest of Dayton recorded a reading of 55. Similar terrain in parts of Butler County makes it possible that similar gusts happened here and there inside the county. 

Three other counties in the area also had significant number of customers without power: Hamilton County with about 900, mostly in or near Anderson Township, Warren with 500 around Franklin and Springboro, and about 1275 in northern Clermont County. 

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