An early morning thunderstorm knocked down tree branches and caused outages in southwest and northeast Austin around 3:30 a.m. this morning.

The outages affected about 700 Austin Utilities customers, primarily in the southwest. According to Austin Utilities General Manager Mark Nibaur, 95 percent of those affected have regained power as of 8:30 a.m.

“Mainly our problems were with lightning and trees coming down,” Nibaur said.

The Austin Police Department received reports of fallen trees and branches that damaged vehicles and several homes across northwest and southwest Austin. “[There was] lots of wind damage in Austin this morning,” said Chief of Police Brian Krueger.

The Reeve Chiropractic Clinic building, 308 Fourth Ave. NW, suffered damage after a tree fell on their building. The extent of the damage is unknown.

The strong wind and rain also caused widespread outages to Freeborn-Mower Cooperative Services electrical infrastructure. As of 7 a.m., FMCS reported about 1,000 members without electricity. By 9:33 a.m., the outage numbers were down to 250 members.  

KSMQ Public Television will be off the air today too after strong winds blew the station’s microwave out of alignment, according to President and CEO Eric Olson. No physical damage reported.