Hundreds of thousands of Ohio residents were without power Tuesday night as tornadoes and heavy rains swept through the region, leaving downed power lines, trees and utility poles in their path of devastation.
Power has now been restored to most communities, but tens of thousands of Cuyahoga County residents are still without power, according to FirstEnergy’s power outage tracker. Of the 258,954 Ohio residents without power as of 1 p.m. Thursday, 171,989 live in Cuyahoga County.
Those residents may be without power for the rest of the week. FirstEnergy estimated Thursday that power will be restored by Aug. 14, more than a week after the storm first hit.
That means more than 55,000 Cleveland residents may not be able to turn on their lights or refrigerate their groceries until the middle of next week. The same goes for the 20,263 residents of Lakewood, 17,714 residents of Parma, 9,481 residents of Westlake and 7,198 residents of Euclid, who probably expected to be without power for a few hours at most.
Residents in Lake (40,683), Geauga (20,955) and Lorain (12,785) counties are still affected by Tuesday’s severe storm.
Only 515 Summit County residents and 1,584 Portage County residents are still without power. The majority of Summit County residents without power live in Barberton (118) and Cuyahoga Falls (117).
FirstEnergy expects power to be restored to residents in these two counties by 11 p.m. Saturday.
EF1 tornadoes confirmed in Summit and Cuyahoga counties
The National Weather Service confirmed Thursday that an EF1 tornado with peak speeds of 104 mph (167 km/h) struck the Richfield and Boston Heights area on Tuesday, traveling 5.32 miles in five minutes and measuring 320 feet (99 meters) wide.
Two more tornadoes from Tuesday were confirmed by the NWS on Wednesday. One touched down in Avon Lake in Cuyahoga County and moved 8.42 miles to Lorain. It reached a peak speed of 110 mph and was 200 yards wide. It moved from 3:45 p.m. to 3:56 p.m. The other touched down in Brookpark, also in Cuyahoga County, and moved 17 miles to Bedford. It reached a peak speed of 104 mph and was 350 yards wide. It moved from 3:59 p.m. to 4:22 p.m. Both were rated EF1.
Weather forecast for Thursday: The remnants of Hurricane Debby hit Akron with high humidity and possible rain
Reporter Anthony Thompson can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @athompsonABJ
