A severe thunderstorm with high windsand at least one potential tornado spotted Thursday evening has left in its wake more than 800,000 Harris County residents without power, plus thousands more in the dark across the Houston region.
Data collected by PowerOutage.us showed that as of 7:45 p.m., nearly 40 percent of Harris County's almost 2 million customers were experiencing a power outage after Thursday's storm. At the same time, CenterPoint Energy reported that more than 860,000 of its customers were without power. The high winds affected multiple events, including the Houston ISD budget meeting planned for Thursday evening.
The storm, accompanied by winds of more than 80 mph, tracked into Houston from the west, and as a result, PowerOutage.us reported almost 75 percent of Waller County customers lost power. After the storm ravaged the Houston area, residents in East Texas' Hardin County, north of Beaumont, were hit hard, as more than 40 percent were found without power as of 7:30 p.m.
According to CenterPoint Energy's Outage Tracker, 100 percent of residents in 77493 zip code, which includes parts of Katy, were without power as of 7:45 p.m. Similarly, nearly the entirety of CenterPoint's service area in Crosby and Baytown, east of Houston, lost power.
The winds were so strong Thursday that they destroyed property at downtown Houston high-rises as the storm rolled through the neighborhood. KHOU reporter Jason Miles posted on X a video showing blown-out windows at the CenterPoint EnergyPlaza and Total Energies towers.
The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for Hockley, Satsuma, Addicks until 6:30 p.m. Thursday, then for Houston, Bellaire and West University Place through 6:45 p.m. as the storm continued east, the NWS issued a tornado warning for Pasadena and Baytown through 7 p.m.
On X, Lauren Przybyl, who anchors Good Day on FOX4 in Dallas-Fort Worth, reported that she observed a tornado forming in Cypress, but no tornado have been confirmed by National Weather Service Houston.
