By Bill Raack, St. Louis Public Radio
ST. LOUIS – Utility crews continue to restore power to homes and businesses across Missouri and Illinois after strong winds blew thru the region Tuesday morning.
About 80,000 outages were reported in Illinois and another 40,000 in Missouri following the storm. Some 2,400 customers are still without power in the Metro East this afternoon and Ameren spokesman Tim Fox said that about 4,000 in Missouri are still out.
"Use the clich perfect storm but it was straight line winds which came through and either knocked trees over into power lines or knocked down the power lines themselves or some combination of things," Fox said.
Fox says Ameren is hopeful to have most, if not all, of the outages repaired by tonight.