Toledo area hit by storms, more than 1,000 still without power

Flooding cancels first shift at Chrysler complex

8/19/2011

Rain and scattered hail Thursday night in Lucas County and northern Wood County canceled the first shift at the Chrysler’s Toledo Assembly complex and left some residents in the dark.

The shift, which starts at 5:30 a.m., was canceled due to flooding at the plant, according to Jody Tinson, a Chrysler spokesman, said Friday morning.

“The thunderstorms were slow moving and pretty spotty,” said Paul Walker, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather, a private forecasting service in State College, Pa.

The highest rainfall reading — just short of three quarters of an inch —was measured at Metcalf Field. It fell between 8 and 9 p.m. Thursday. “Obviously there was much more rainfall in other areas, possibly up to an inch and a half,” Mr. Walker said.

As of about 10 a.m. Friday, about 1,046 Toledo Edison customers were without power, 945 of whom were in the area of Holland. The cause of the outage was a fuse failure just outside Holland. Crews were on site, fixing the problem, Gary Keys, a utility spokesman, said.

The rest of the affected homes were along Robinwood and Melrose avenues in central Toledo, where power was interrupted when downed tree limbs brought down the power lines, Mr. Keys said.

The utility was expecting to have power restored to all by noon Friday. Initially, of 2,200 Toledo Edison customers without power in northwest Ohio, 1,400 were in Point Place and parts of North Toledo, the utility spokesman said.

Several vehicles were stuck Thursday night in high water at Matzinger Road and Dura Avenue in Toledo. The storm started after 6 p.m., and by 6:20, several Toledo weather spotters reported one-inch diameter hail to the National Weather Service office in Cleveland.

The weather service issued a flash flood warning just after 7 p.m. Thursday as radar indicated some portions of eastern Lucas County received three inches of rain. The flash-flood warning ended at 11 p.m.

Weather radar indicated some portion of eastern Lucas County had received more than 3 inches of rain. The locations impacted included Waterville, Toledo, Sylvania, and Whitehouse.

Earlier Thursday evening, a severe thunderstorm warning was issued for northwestern Ottawa and northeastern Lucas counties after weather spotters in the Toledo area reported a severe thunderstorm capable of producing destructive golf-ball size hail. The storm was located near Oregon, or 13 miles east of Toledo. It was moving east at 15 mph, the weather service reported.