It’s certainly not unusual for power outages to plague San Antonio when a storm hits. A little rain tumbles branches and downs lines for big chunks of neighborhoods. But the over 30,000 San Antonio residents whose homes went black Thursday morning may have been caused by an excessive amount of lighting.
A severe storm or two in June is not unheard of in the Alamo City. It is, after all, severe weather season. The most common occurrences are hail and strong winds, but a rogue lightning storm downing power for thousands wasn’t in the cards Wednesday night. But that’s exactly what happened Thursday morning, June 12.
On average, 1,000 or 2,000 lighting strikes hit the ground during a storm, says CPS Energy Vice President of Maintenance and Operations Joe Treviño. This morning, a whopping 11,000 bolts of electricity connected the earth and sky. According to CPS Energy officials, this may be the reason so many lights went out. Though, it’ll be some time before technicians can put a finger on the exact culprit.
“We’ve seen some storms with lighting, but the lighting strikes are usually 1,000 to 2,000 lightning strikes,” Treviño said during from a lectern a CPS Energy headquarters late Thursday morning. “Last night … we had a little over 11,000…. Continues issues with lighting. What cause it will have on the system [is unknown]. It may create a bigger outage. When we bring [the number of outages] to a smaller number, we’ll finally see the impact of it.”
At the height of the storm’s impact – which led to flooding that killed four – CPS Energy was reporting as many as 30,000 customers without power. As of late Thursday morning, that was down to 10,000 customers across 400 outages. The public power provider warns that crews will begin working on smaller outages first when it’s safe, but some customers are expected to be without power for at least 24 hours.
Treviño said lighting strikes likely plaid a major role in the power outages sweeping San Antonio, alongside strong winds and heavy rains. He said outages could be due to direct lightning hits or residual damage from lightning strikes.