Thousands of West Virginia residents were without power today after high winds swept through the area overnight.
Shortly after noon, more than 8,000 Appalachian Power customers in West Virginia were without electricity, according to the company's website. Kanawha, Wayne and Wyoming counties each included more than 1,000 of those customers.
"Until we get a clearer picture of the amount of damage to electrical facilities we cannot provide an accurate restoration estimate," Appalachian Power, which serves much of Southern West Virginia said in social media posts this morning. Workers were fixing critical outages and problems that affected the largest number of customers, the company said.
Some areas served by Appalachian Power in Virginia were the most affected by the winds, according to the company. Most of the damage was "downed wires, broken cross arms, and broken poles."
A scheduled power outage today in Hurricane and Culloden was canceled because of the windstorm.
A Kanawha County Metro 911 dispatcher said the county didn't see any major problems because of the high winds.
FirstEnergy, which serves much of northern and eastern West Virginia, had about 2,500 customers without electricity as of noon, with the hardest-hit counties in the north-central part of the state.