Thousands of people across Iowa were without electricity early Tuesday morning, as a large complex of storms walloped the Midwest Monday and overnight into Tuesday morning. In Atlantic, winds in excess of 50-miles per hour caused a tree limb to fall on a house at 1407 Chestnut Street. Atlantic Municipal Utilities (AMU) General Manager Steve Tjepkes told KJAN News it was at about that same time the first power outage was reported in Atlantic. Tjepkes said a couple of outages were called in from the 2100 block of Hillcrest Drive, and the 800 block of Elm Street.

Not much later, a line in the area of Olive Street and Hillcrest was dropped by falling tree limbs, but the majority of customers on the west side of town lost power after a primary line was hit by a tree limb behind Deter Motor Company, at around 6-a.m.  Tjepkes said in all, some 700 in-town and rural AMU customers lost power at some point during the night, but service was restored to all customers by around 8:15-a.m. At around 3:15-a.m., officials with Mid-American Energy, Alliant Energy, and the Iowa Association of Electric Cooperatives had reported a combined 60-thousand customers were without power throughout the state. More than half of those customers were in the Des Moines metro area.