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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A round of powerful thunderstorms swept through Alexandria on Monday evening, knocking out power to nearly 7,900 customers in the city as the region sat under a severe thunderstorm watch.
As of 7:46 p.m., Dominion Energy reported 7,893 customers without power in Alexandria, out of 71,255 served in the city, according to the utility's outage map. Across Northern Virginia, the utility reported 47,733 customers out. Dominion said on its outage map that strong thunderstorms with damaging winds had hit its service area and that crews were working to restore power. The utility did not provide an estimated restoration time for Alexandria.
The National Weather Service had placed Alexandria and the surrounding area under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch in effect until 9 p.m. The watch, issued by the agency's Storm Prediction Center, stretched across the District, central Maryland and dozens of Virginia counties and independent cities, including Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax.
In a hazardous weather outlook issued Monday afternoon, the weather service's Baltimore/Washington office warned that scattered severe thunderstorms capable of producing damaging winds and isolated tornadoes were possible through late evening. Forecasters said multiple rounds of storms could bring scattered urban and poor-drainage flooding to the Baltimore-Washington metro area, and called for trained storm spotters to be on alert through the evening.
In Alexandria, about 0.78 inches of rain — roughly 20 millimeters — was recorded in a home rain gauge during the storms, according to a reading taken by The Alexandria Brief.
The City of Alexandria also urged residents to report power outages or downed power lines to Dominion online at dominionenergy.com/outage or by calling 866-366-4357. Dominion advised customers to stay at least 30 feet from downed lines and to assume any downed line is energized.
The full extent of any wind damage or flooding in the city was not immediately clear Monday evening.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
