Update at 8:50 am Friday: Austin Energy says power was completely restored to customers at 3 am. Here's their final release.
The majority of outages were due to either tree limbs on power lines or lightning strikes. In all repairs had to be made at more than 260 locations. Many of those repairs were on lines located at the rear of properties rather than at the street. This prevents the use of bucket trucks and requires materials be carried in through backyards, tree trimmers climb trees to remove limbs in power lines and linemen climb poles to make the necessary repairs. About half of the Austin Energy electric system is located at the back of lots rather than at the street.
Update at 5:26 pm: Austin Energy now says the number of people without power is down to 2,400.
Update at 4:50 pm: Austin Energy says the number of people without power is now below 5,000.
Earlier: Austin Energy says it currently has about 11,500 customers without power at 140 different locations across the city. The worst affected area is this part of southeast Austin, where more than 1,700 people are without electricity.
Another large outage affects almost 1,000 customers just northeast of the triangle in North Austin.
Austin Energy says it has 32 crews currently working to restore power. You can check the status of power outages here.
