Another round of severe weather moved through central and south central Kansas late Wednesday night and brought wind gusts up to 80 miles an hour, leaving damage and power outages across the region.

The 80 mile-an-hour gusts were reported in McPherson County, where damage was reported to buildings, trees and power lines.

Sedgwick County had winds of 60 to 70 miles an hour.  There were reports of power poles down near Cheney and a pole was down across a roadway near Sedgwick in Harvey County.  Large trees were also uprooted in Sedgwick.

Evergy reported that outage numbers peaked at about 1:30 a.m. with 28,000 customers out, and a total of 37,000 customers lost power during the storm. Crews began repairs as soon as it was safe to do so and have restored power to 85 percent of the affected customers.  As of Thursday afternoon, there were less than 5,000 customers without power.

The most significant damage from the storm impacted the Topeka, Wichita, Leavenworth and Newton areas. Evergy crews from surrounding communities have been helping with power restoration in those areas. Initial damage reports include broken poles, downed wires, and trees in powerlines.   Restoration for some customers is expected to take until Friday evening. In the town of Sedgwick, Evergy crews are working to replace two dozen poles.  Restoration work will take until Friday.  Customers in other areas were expected to be restored by Thursday night.

55th Street South, east of Rock Road, was closed because of downed power poles and lines (picture above).

Two school districts canceled classes for Thursday because of storm damage and power outages.  There is no school in USD 396 Douglass and USD 439 Sedgwick.    Sports physicals will still take place in Douglass.

[ photo:  KWCH – Facebook ]