Storm leaves 30,000 without power, planes stuck at Nashville airport

Around 30,000 customers were without power in Nashville as of 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, including parts of the Nashville International Airport, where workers believe the airport was struck by lightning.

Airport spokesperson Shannon Sumrall said the outage affected the jet bridges attached to departing planes, leaving them nonoperational.

"There will be a lot of planes that will be diverted or canceled," Sumrall said. "People can check real time flight data at flynashville.com."

Power was not restored at the airport until around 7:40 p.m.

Nashville Electric Service spokesperson Holden Miller said the outages jumped by about 20,000 in 45 minutes, after the storm passed. On the electric service's website, an outage map showed about 25 red balloons scattered across the city. The red balloons indicated hundreds of outages and dozens of green and blue balloons indicated smaller clusters.

"Where you see the red pins, those are the areas hit the hardest and effecting the majority of our customers," Miller said. "That is where are crews are going first."

Miller said the storms moved through fast, likely knocking down power lines and tripping breakers, but that the worst of the storms ended shortly after the severe thunderstorm warning for parts of Middle Tennessee and that no additional outages were expected.

As of 9 p.m., several thousand customers remained without power.