Home Local & Regional News Thousands in Great Falls lose power after storm

Thousands in Great Falls lose power after storm

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Thousands in Great Falls lose power after storm
Great Falls after the rains on July 12.

More than 16,000 people in Fairfax County lost power Tuesday evening after a torrential rainstorm with high winds passed through the D.C. area. As of 7 pm, a total of 16,255 electricity users in the county had lost power, including 15,480 Dominion Energy customers.

The outage map on Dominion’s website showed that the Great Falls and Wolf Trap area experienced the heaviest losses; some 4,246 customers were without power for some portion of the evening. The Tysons and Reston areas were also hard hit.

Source: Dominion Energy website

The National Weather Service had issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for southern Fairfax County until 8:30 pm, which was extended until 10:00 pm, forecasting 60 mph wind gusts and quarter-sized hail. According to an initial report, wind gusts from an earlier storm reached up to 70 mph in Centreville. A flood watch was reported for the D.C. area until midnight, due to expected flash flooding expected from the heavy rains.

As of 1:20 pm Wednesday, electricity had been restored to most customers in Fairfax County, although there were still 415 customers without power, according to PowerOutage.US. There were no active hazardous weather conditions reported by the National Weather Service for northern Virginia during the day following the storms.