photo by: Chris Conde

A cyclist helps clear debris after wind damaged a traffic light around 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021, at the intersection of Ninth and Vermont streets in downtown Lawrence.

A thunderstorm with strong, straight-line winds came through Douglas County early Wednesday evening, producing downed power lines and some roof damage but no reports of injuries.

Douglas County Emergency Management reported multiple incidents of downed power lines in Lawrence, Baldwin City, Eudora and Lecompton. But a spokesman with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said winds in Baldwin City in southern Douglas County may have been more severe than elsewhere.

Spokesman George Diepenbrock cited reports of a mobile home in the 200 block of Wesley Street in Baldwin City that lost its roof during the storm. There also were reports of an electrical transformer that caught fire in Baldwin City, along with multiple downed power lines.

The department also had received reports of roof damage in the 4500 block of Trail Road in northwest Lawrence.

However, reports of injuries or other larger-scale damage hadn’t yet emerged as of 6:30 p.m. with much of the storm having passed through the area.

As of 6:30 p.m. Evergy was reporting about 50 power outages in Lawrence, while outages were more widespread to the west. It wasn’t clear how many households were without power as a result of those outages. In Topeka, more than 150 outages were being reported via Evergy’s online outage map. Throughout Evergy’s territory in Kansas and Missouri, there were about 4,500 outages impacting about 155,000 customers.

Diepenbrock said the department was receiving multiple reports of strong odors of smoke throughout Douglas County. He said that is not likely from fires in Douglas County, but rather from fires all the way in central Kansas. The National Weather Service out of Topeka was reporting on its social media feeds that the strong winds out of the west were pushing smoke into eastern Kansas from those fires in central Kansas.

Diepenbrock urged Douglas County residents to use caution for the rest of Wednesday evening, as severe weather was still possible.

“The concern is that while the storm front has kind of moved through, we are going to have higher winds throughout the evening,” Diepenbrock said.

As of about 6:30 p.m., the highest reported wind speed at the weather station at Lawrence Municipal Airport was 59 mph, Diepenbrock said. However, there were reports from emergency responders in the field who were estimating wind speeds of more than 80 mph in several parts of the county, according to emergency radio traffic.