Christmas Eve storm knocks out power for hundreds in Gonzales County

A Christmas Eve thunderstorm brought hail and heavy rains to Gonzales County and knocked out power to more than 1,800 customers — most of those with GVEC.

At 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 24, GVEC reported thunderstorms in the area had caused several outages affecting 3,116 members in Gonzales and Guadalupe County. The peak outage count for Gonzales County at that time reached 1,867 meters.

Linemen worked as safely and as quickly as possible to restore service to customers, knocking the total number of meters still affected to just 600 within an hour at 12:45 a.m. Christmas morning. More outages occurred due to weather, which meant that by 3:10 a.m. there were still 28 outages affecting 945 members. By 7 a.m., that number had fallen to 10 outages and 574 members and by 10 a.m., just 39 members were waiting for their power to be restored.

The National Weather Service had put out a severe thunderstorm warning for Gonzales County with 60 mph wind gusts and quarter size hail expected as well as a small stream flood advisory due to runoff from the rain.

Rainfall reported by the National Weather Service in Gonzales County ranged from just 0.26 inches reported five miles south of Waelder at 8:30 a.m. Christmas Day to 3.27 inches reported by 5 a.m. Christmas Day 6.5 miles east of Belmont.

No major incidents were reported by the Gonzales County Emergency Management or Fire Marshal Jimmy Harless.