By KWMU staff
St. Louis – Strong thunderstorms Tuesday afternoon downed trees and damaged power lines throughout the St. Louis area.
At the height of the outage, about 50,000 homes and businesses were without electricity.
On Wednesday morning AmerenUE reported about 8,000 customers still in the dark; most are north of I-64.
The Renaissance hotel downtown had to move its guests to other hotels after the storm tore off part of the building's facade.
In Clayton, Shaw Park is closed until further notice because of storm damage, and high winds ripped large chunks of roofing material from the the St. Louis County Police headquarters.