Severe storms knock out power, flood roads; house struck by lightning in Greendale

Severe thunderstorms dropped nearly three inches of rain and knocked out power to thousands across the Milwaukee metro area late Monday afternoon.

We Energies says about 15,000 customers lost power in the wake of the storms. Most of those – about 11,000 – were in the city of Milwaukee. The communities of Glendale, Wauwatosa and Whitefish Bay also were experiencing outages. 

By Tuesday morning, the number without power had been reduced to less than 1,000.

Meanwhile, a rain gauge at North 36th Street and West Fond du Lac Avene on Milwaukee's north side had tallied 2.85 inches of rain as of 4:41 p.m., according to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.

So much rain in such a short amount of time led to combined sanitary and storm sewers overflowing to Milwaukee's rivers and Lake Michigan, according to MMSD.

MMSD Executive Director Kevin Shafer said the overflows of untreated wastewater were done as an emergency measure to prevent sewage backups into residential and commercial businesses.

RELATED:Combined sewers overflow into Milwaukee rivers and Lake Michigan in wake of intense rainfall

Milwaukee police responded to numerous calls of flooding and traffic hazards as a result of the storms, according to an online log of police calls. 

Milwaukee firefighters responded to numerous reports of wires down. 

Lightning set fire to a house in the 15300 block of West Grange Avenue in New Berlin. The occupants escaped safely.

In Greendale, a house in the 4900 block of Seton Place was struck by lightning as the storms passed through, said Capt. Mike Wojnowski of the Greendale Fire Department. 

"It blew three holes in the roof and took out a couple circuit breakers," in the house, Wojnowski said. 

There was no fire and no one was injured as a result of the lightning strike, he said. 

The storms turned the evening commute into somewhat of a mess, with high travel times reported across the region's freeway system. 

As the storms moved through, the National Weather Service issued severe thunderstorm warnings for a number of counties across southeast Wisconsin. It also issued an urban and small stream flood advisory for Milwaukee and eastern Waukesha counties as the storms were dumping heavy rain across the area. Those advisories expired early in the evening.

The high humidity added fuel to the thunderstorms. 

"There was quite a bit of moisture in the air with these storms..." said Steve Hentz, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sullivan. "They were dumping a lot of rain in a short amount of time." 

At 4:45 p.m., the worst of the storms had pushed southeast into the Kenosha area, Hentz said.