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Oncor responds to outages caused by strong winds, affecting over 117,000 North Texans

Star-Telegram archives/SPECIAL/ RICHARD W. RODRIGUEZ

More than 117,000 people are without electricity in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex Thursday after heavy winds in the region knocked out power lines, prompting Oncor to warn customers and promise fast response times to the outages.

Strong, damaging winds in North Texas have downed power lines, delayed flights and prompted warnings from the National Weather Service in Fort Worth urging people to secure loose items or take them indoors. The weather service has measured wind speeds topping out at 58 mph in Dallas, 56 mph in McKinney and Mineral Wells, and 54 mph in Waco.

Matt Stalley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth, said the service forecasts the heaviest winds will pass Thursday, but gusts up to 35 miles per hour could be seen throughout North Texas into Friday.

Star-Telegram media partner WFAA-TV reported Thursday that inbound flights to DFW Airport have been delayed an average of 56 minutes, with Dallas Love Field experiencing inbound flight delays averaging 32 minutes. Outbound flights at DFW International Airport have been delayed an average of an hour and 32 minutes. Dallas Love Field has not released any information on how long delays for outbound flights are averaging.

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The National Weather Service said residents and businesses need to bring any loose property indoors and secure anything that cannot be taken indoors.

“You don’t want your property to end up in your neighbor’s yard or cause damage by being blown away,” Stalley said.

Drivers should also use extra caution and expect winds to cause some drifting on roads, especially those traveling east or west.

The winds were brought into the area by a low pressure system over the Mississippi Valley and Tennessee that formed after a cold front pushed storms through the Central Plains and into North Texas earlier this week, Stalley said. While low pressure systems causing the wind speeds seen by North Texans on Thursday are not particularly common, they’re don’t surprise meteorologists, either.

Low pressure systems that can cause high wind speeds happen a few times a year, usually in the cooler months. While the winds are blowing in from the north, Stalley said that because they were made possible by storms that have already passed through the region it is unlikely North Texans will see any rain or other weather events in the area as a result of the winds.