Friday afternoon's thunderstorms knocked out power, downed trees and sent streams of water down roadways across the metro.
Evergy reported that at the storm's peak, 186,000 customers were without power, with nearly 3,500 reported outage events.
As of 7 a.m. Saturday morning, the number of power outages had been reduced by half.
By 1:30 p.m., just under 65,000 customers were left without power.
Please assume downed lines are still energized and stay at least 35 feet away from them or limbs on lines. We appreciate your patience as crews continue to restore power for you, your neighbors and our region.
— Evergy (@evergypower) July 15, 2023
One of the businesses dealing with outages is McLain's Bakery in Waldo, which is dealing with lost food orders.
"Wedding cakes are being moved to a separate location to continue their decoration," the store posted on Instagram. "A lot of our cakes going out today were able to be completed in time."
The Shawnee Mission Post collected images of the aftermath in Johnson County.
Evergy said it can't provide individual estimated power restoration times, but that it expects restoration in the most severely impacted areas will take multiple days.
🚨 OUTAGE UPDATE 🚨
— Evergy (@evergypower) July 15, 2023
As of 7 a.m., we have about 100,000 Evergy customers without power in our service area. More than 186,000 Evergy customers lost power as Friday’s storm and high winds moved across Kansas and Missouri. pic.twitter.com/f42TfYsNFr
"More than 1,000 people are working on storm restoration, including line and vegetation crews, plus safety and other support teams," the utility wrote on its website. "We have also reached out to neighboring utilities in Iowa, Colorado, Oklahoma and Missouri for assistance."
As of 8 a.m. Saturday, Independence Power & Light reported 109 outages impacting 1,554 customers.
The Kansas City Board of Public Utilities reports 378 outages affecting 9,430 customers.
KCUR's own signal was knocked off the air for several hours. The broadcast on 89.3 FM was restored around 8 p.m. with national programming, but KCUR's local studios remain without power and unable to provide local programming. KCUR's web livestream is also down.
Our original story continues below.
The National Weather Service reported that as of 5:08 p.m., the line of storms had moved east of the metro but were still producing winds up to 60 miles per hour and hail approximately the size of a nickel. A map on its website catalogues updated warnings and alerts for the region.
In a tweet, it also relayed reports of standing water along roadways and urged drivers to be cautious.
We are receiving reports of standing water along roadways throughout the KC Metro. These conditions are gradually improving with lighter rainfall reports. Please be careful if driving this evening. Turn around, don't drown.
— NWS Kansas City (@NWSKansasCity) July 14, 2023
The Kansas City metro remained under a severe thunderstorm watch until 7 p.m. Friday, as did surrounding counties on both the Kansas and Missouri side.
Several local municipalities — Lawrence, North Kansas City, Leawood and others — reported on Twitter that tree limbs were down and crews were working to clear paths and repair damage.
Due to the severe thunderstorm, there is a large amount of tree limbs and debris on sidewalks and roadways. Our crews will be cleaning up trees and tree limbs from the main roadways. If you do not need to be driving, please stay home as crews continue to clear debris. (1/2)
— City of Lawrence KS (@lawrenceks) July 14, 2023
This story will be updated.
