Storms bring hail, damaging winds to San Antonio area

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Fast-moving storms with hail and damaging winds knocked out power for more than 50,000 CPS Energy customers Thursday afternoon.

National Weather Service meteorologist Cory Van Pelt said there were three storms that moved through the area.

“They just kept forming up to the northwest and they moved down to the south,” Van Pelt said. The strongest storm moved through San Antonio in about 30 minutes, meteorologists said.

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“There was some damage around Hollywood Park, a lot of damage in Bulverde, and a few reports around downtown,” Van Pelt said. “A lot of trees down, power poles.”

The National Weather Service tweeted out photos showing quarter-sized hail that fell sporadically throughout downtown Thursday evening.

CPS Energy was still responding to 618 outages affecting 57,964 customers as of about 8:30 p.m. Officials said storms can cause outages in a number of ways including by lightning strikes on transformers and other utility equipment. Strong winds cause tree limbs to hit power lines, or lines to coming into contact with each other.

People are advised to stay away from downed power lines and report them to CPS Energy.

Even in an outage, power lines may still have electricity running through them, officials said.

Staff writers Chris Quinn and Jacob Beltran contributed to this report.

Valeria Olivares is a reporter covering San Antonio and Bexar County. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | Valeria.Olivares@express-news.net | Twitter: @ValeriaOliEsc