Thousands without power, lake-effect snow warning issued

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Thousands of customers crossed Northeast Ohio were without powerfulness Monday day arsenic beardown winds and dense snowfall moved done nan region.

FirstEnergy Corp. reported outages across Cuyahoga, Lake and Geauga counties, arsenic upwind gusts reached 60 mph. Much of nan Cleveland area is nether a precocious upwind informing and a wintertime upwind advisory. Geauga County is besides nether a lake-effect snowfall warning.

As of 2:04 p.m., location were 5,173 customers without powerfulness successful Cuyahoga, 1,224 successful Geauga and 2,583 successful Lake. Cleveland Public Power is not reporting immoderate wide issues connected its online outage map.

The outages travel arsenic a powerful wintertime large wind barrels done nan region, bringing quickly falling temperatures, dense bursts of snowfall and vulnerable recreation conditions. A beardown acold beforehand pushed temperatures from nan 50s into nan 20s earlier Monday, raising nan consequence of flash freezing connected roads and sidewalks.

By Tuesday afternoon, 3 to 7 inches of snowfall could accumulate crossed parts of Northeast Ohio, pinch nan highest totals successful nan superior snowbelt eastbound of Cleveland.

Snowfall rates could transcend 1 inch per hr astatine times, peculiarly successful eastbound parts of nan region. Forecasters warned that blowing snowfall and falling character limbs could lead to much powerfulness outages and mediocre driving conditions.

Snow is expected to taper disconnected Tuesday night, though gusty winds and acold temperatures will linger into midweek.

Sean McDonnell covers Cleveland City Hall for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. Prior to this domiciled he covered nan business beat. His focus, whether reporting connected metropolis authorities aliases nan economy, is to write...