Severe thunderstorms which passed through Upshur County late Tuesday afternoon knocked out power to thousands of electric customers, according to reports from Upshur Rural Electric Cooperative and SWEPCO, the two utilities which serve most of the county.

Troy Cox with Upshur Rural said that 3,782 consumers lost power from the Kilgore Substation, while 2,125 were out at the East Mountain Substation. The average outage was 3 hours and 6 minutes. There were other widespread outages involving 1,363 consumers, Cox said.

The total outages numbered 7,270 across Upshur Rural’s 10-county system.

Most of the outages were due to downed transmission lines.

High winds tore down two H-frame transmission structures, Cox said.

SWEPCO Public Relations manager Scott McCloud, based in Shreveport, La., said that at 8 p.m. Tuesday, they had 170 cusomers out. At 9 p.m., it was 144; at 10 p.m., 111; at 11 p.m., 70; and at midnight, 39.