Power outages in Columbus and central Ohio after tornadoes
Columbus and Central Ohio Weather
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Wind gusts as fast as 80 mph whipped through Columbus and surrounding counties during a tornado warning Wednesday morning, leaving thousands without power.
Thus far, the National Weather Service has confirmed three tornadoes touched down in central Ohio: One in Madison County at 5:20 a.m., another in Blacklick through Licking County, and a third in Hilliard.
AEP Ohio’s outage map reported 64 outages affecting more than 1,300 customers as of 6 p.m. Separate power company OhioEdison also reported several outages (more than 5,500) in its coverage area, including London, where storms began to form conditions conducive to tornadoes early on.
AEP Ohio announced prior to the storm that it anticipated broken poles and downed power lines because of the potential for high winds. It warned residents in any affected areas to stay as far away from any downed cables as possible.
NBC4 has live power outage trackers available below from four central Ohio electric companies:
AEP Ohio
For a fullscreen map of AEP outages, click here. Users can find their neighborhood or using a dropdown menu on the left side of the screen, view the map by county or zip code.
If a customer checks their location and sees an outage, they can click on the outage icon and a bar on the right-hand side of the screen will appear. This shows how many customers are affected by the outage, when the outage was reported, and an estimated time that power will be restored.
Snow emergencies for Columbus and central Ohio, Dec. 23
Customers can report an outage on the left panel of the map.
FirstEnergy/Ohio Edison
FirstEnergy/Ohio Edison customers in rural parts of north-central Ohio can click here for a fullscreen map. This map allows users to search by county. However, it does not present the information in map form. Instead, it opens an alphabetized list of counties it serves, and the number of customers affected by outages.
Customers can report an outage by clicking on the button in the map’s top right corner.
Union Rural Electric Cooperative
Union Rural Electric Cooperative, which predominantly serves electricity to the Marysville area, breaks down its service areas by ZIP code, rather than county.
URE allows customers to report outages either by calling 937-642-1826 or online.
Southern Central Power Company
Ohio Southern Central power customers can find their outage map here.
Serving mostly the south-central part of Ohio, the map also allows users to search by location or break down the outages by county by clicking the “County” button on the right side of the key on the left-hand side of the map.
The company has instructions on how customers can report a power outage on its website.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to NBC4 WCMH-TV.
