An early morning storm Monday knocked out power for hundreds of Springfield residents. A related outage will persist for a few more hours as damaged equipment is repaired.
About 500 City Utilities customers in northwest Springfield remain without power as of about 9:30 a.m. in an area south of Kearney Street and east and west of Kansas Expressway. Crews are repairing a utility pole that was damaged by the storm, said Joel Alexander, spokesperson for City Utilities. Traffic lights at intersections in that area were inoperable.
“It is likely tree damage,” Alexander said. “It depends on the nature of the damage, but that will take several hours to repair.”
The National Weather Service reported wind gusts of about 43 mph as the storm rolled through Springfield around 6 a.m. Meteorologist Ben Price, with the Springfield branch of the NWS, said the north side of Springfield saw about a quarter- to a half-inch of rain.
Alexander said the storm caused several outages across the northern part of the city. As many as 1,600 were without power at some point, but most of those outages have been repaired.
Meteorologists are forecasting an increased likeliness of storms as the week progresses, particularly on Wednesday afternoon and evening.
“Today is the lowest chance,” Price said. “Chances increase every day through the weekend.”
