Storms, lightning cause thousands to lose power Thursday

Thousands of people in the Dayton area were without power Thursday morning following a round of showers and thunderstorms.

At one point, Dayton Power and Light's website indicated over 3,000 people were without power from the storms in Montgomery County alone. That number fell below 1,000 within an hour as crews worked to restore the power.

The storms that moved through gave way to locally heavy rain and a lot of lightning.

"At one point when the storms were moving through the Dayton area, over 300 lightning strikes had occurred in just a 15-minute time span,” said Storm Center 7 Meteorologist Brett Collar. “Radar estimates also indicated that some spots saw over one inch of rain, which is impressive considering it only rained for about 20 or 30 minutes in a specific spot.”

RELATED: What power crews do to help restore power after storms at 5 p.m.

That round of showers and storms moved out, and the area quickly began to dry up and even saw some sunshine.

"But we're not out of the woods quite yet,” Collar said. "More showers and storms will be possible later today."

Collar goes on to say that anything that does develop later Thursday is not expected to be as widespread or as strong.

Residents in the Miami Valley are urged to keep a close eye to the sky and stay tuned to whio.com and News Center 7.

Be sure to download the free WHIO weather app so that you can track anything that develops later today.