During Wednesday night and most of Thursday, Dallas was shaken by winds over 60 miles per hour. Fire crews and utility companies were stretched thin due to a reported 100,000 people without power, as well as fallen power lines and trees.
The National Weather Service said that the winds were at a constant 33 mph, with gusts over 60 mph. Gusts were high enough to topple overhead power lines, and force Oncor electricity to shut down part of their Dallas-Tarrant Grid.
A spokesman for Oncor, Grant Cruise, said that due to fallen debris, power would be knocked out to 100,000 people as of 6 p.m. on Thursday. Despite crews trying to restore power, Cruise states that the winds continue to make it difficult to repair lines.
At the Dallas Fort-Worth International Airport, wind gusts ripped through the runways, causing American Airlines to cancel 250 flights. CBS DFW reported that flight routes into the airport had to stay at their origin due to the weather. DFW International said through social media that they had to restrict air traffic through specific runways for safety.
The DART transit agency reported that the light rail service was temporarily shut down due to an outage in downtown Dallas. The service has been restored as of now.
Dallas Morning News also received word of debris being flung off a high-rise building on Elm Street. Many outages in intersections caused traffic build-up, Dallas Police tweeted. They urged people to proceed with caution and to “treat intersections with blank lights as a four-way stop.”
Cruise told reporters that Thursday’s storm was one of the largest utility crises since February. “There is patio furniture being blown over from people’s yards, we have umbrellas, we just have all sorts of debris that are flying into equipment right now,” he stated.
