August 3, 2020—The Kerrville area experienced powerful thunderstorms that began around 6 p.m. this past Friday evening on July 31. At the peak of the storm, 659 Kerrville Public Utility Board (KPUB) customers lost power due to 18 separate outages in the Comanche Trace, Kerrville South and Peterson Farm Road area. The outage causes were brought on by the storm, and the majority of them were due to lightning strikes, except for a path between the Peterson Farm Road and Split Rock Road area, with reported strong winds that caused damages in our community.
On Peterson Farm Road, eight utility poles in a row were damaged or broken that required full pole replacements for power restoration efforts. A KPUB customer witnessed the storm happening on Peterson Farm Road while he was out working in his barn.
“It sounded like a freight train was coming—the wind was blowing so hard,” said Tom Featherstone. “The horses started kicking, and the barn roof started vibrating so strongly that I thought at one point, the entire thing was going to come down.
Featherstone added that when he walked out the front of his barn after the worst of the storm had passed, he was shocked to see utility poles leaning that had been completely stripped of their power lines. “I just cannot thank KPUB enough for what they did to get our lights back on. Those guys were working for over 18 hours straight, and I could tell they were exhausted.”
KPUB restored power to 376 customers on Friday evening by 9:32 p.m. Restoration efforts continued throughout the night to repair the outage cause at Peterson Farm Road. Power was fully restored to the 283 remaining KPUB customers by Saturday at 1:05 p.m.
Other reported storm damages included a dugout roof being blown off at Our Lady of the Hills Regional Catholic School, which is located on Peterson Farm Road as well. The Kerrville Municipal Airport and Mooney International Aircraft both experienced storm-related damages.
“We lost a roof to one of our sheds with metal ending up in the runway area, said Devan Burns, HR manager for Mooney International Aircraft. “We are repairing hangar doors, windows and signs from the storm damages. Mooney is grateful that the storm did not cause any more damages than what occurred.”
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