A storm system that moved through the area caused more than 3,500 Westar Energy customers to lose power in Douglas County early Thursday morning.

The outages were scattered across Lawrence, and began at around 1 a.m., said Erin La Row, Westar Energy spokeswoman.

The lightning and trees falling on power lines were to blame for the outages, La Row said, and crews have been working to restore power.

As of 2:45 p.m. Thursday, the number of outages had been cut down to 33 customers in Douglas County.

Areas in western Johnson County near De Soto were also affected by outages, as were scattered sites in Jefferson County, but power had been restored to those areas by Thursday afternoon.

Despite heavy lightning, no warnings were issued by the National Weather Service in Topeka.

Here’s the link to the outage map in Lawrence.

We’ll keep monitoring.

Here’s the link to the National Weather Service radar: http://1.usa.gov/NHQD3C.