Downbursts and microbursts stemming from winds of up to 60 mph lashed the county Thursday evening and overnight, downing trees, taking out power lines and leaving thousands of electric customers in the dark.

“A number of severe storms passed through much of Western Pennsylvania on Thursday night,” said Lee Hendricks, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh. “(The damage) was done by thunderstorm winds, downbursts and microbursts.”

Hendricks said the National Weather Service issued its first severe thunderstorm warning for Eastern Ohio at 2:17 p.m. Thursday and ended up issuing 18 severe warnings in the tri-state area throughout the day and overnight.

“It was a pretty big batch,” he said of the relentless storms.

On Friday, another warning was issued just before 9 a.m., and strong winds were expected to continue throughout the day.

But Hendricks said the county's weather woes overnight Thursday and through the daytime Friday were not the remnants of Hurricane Laura, which tore up the Gulf Coast a few days before.

The storms that were predicted for Friday night, he said, represented the edges of the storm system from Laura.

He said high winds were not expected from those remnants.

“That's pretty much been wrung out of the remnants of the system,” Hendricks said.

He expected 1.5 to 2 inches of rain through Saturday from Laura's aftermath.

“That's going to be fairly uniform across Western Pennsylvania,” Hendricks said.

The storms that began Thursday evening and continued overnight caused widespread power outages across the county.

Todd Meyers, FirstEnergy spokesman, said West Penn Power in Butler County saw more than 5,000 customers down, and Penn Power recorded 400 customers without power in the county.

By 9 a.m. Friday, about 2,300 customers' power had been restored by crews. At 8:30 p.m. Friday, 1,038 customers were still without power with the most affected areas being Jefferson Township, 263 customers, and Clearfield Township, 223.

Meyers said the company sustained more than 30 broken utility poles, 40 broken crossarms, which hold wires and transformers on the poles, and 100 spans of wire between poles down as a result of the overnight storms.

“We got nailed this time,” Meyers said.

Because damage occurred in many different spots and multiple poles must be replaced, crews are spread thinner, meaning some customers were expected to be in the dark all day Saturday.

He said FirstEnergy contractors in and around the county and crews from counties in Southwestern Pennsylvania mobilized early Friday morning to help out in Butler County.

Meyers hoped the storms forecast for Friday would not add work for power crews, who were already stretched thin.

“We've got a bit of a weather roller coaster,” he said.

Matt Boshaw, CEO at Central Electric Cooperative, said most of the 930 customers who were without power in the company's service area were in Butler County.

He said 600 of those outages had crews dispatched by 9 a.m. Friday morning.

“This storm had debris and water flowing everywhere, so we ended up with a lot of individual outages,” Boshaw said.

He expected all customers to be restored by Saturday, pending any damage caused by the storms predicted for Friday.

Boshaw advised customers not to open their refrigerators or freezers, as a sealed refrigerator can keep food safe for 24 to 48 hours and longer for foods in a freezer.

Both Boshaw and Meyers stressed that property owners should not attempt to clean up their yards and driveways until crews restore power as downed electric lines could be live.

“These kinds of storms are fraught with all kinds of danger because people want to get out there and clean up their properties, and it's best just to wait until we get through there and do what we need to do,” Meyers said.