COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – As many as 20,000 people in the Columbus area lost power early Thursday morning due to high winds, fallen trees and downed power lines.

According to the American Electric Power outage tracking map, approximately 4,600 customers remain without power, as of 8:45 a.m. Thursday, with 160 outage cases reported. Overnight high winds, damaged trees and some freezing rain contributed to over 20,000 customers losing power in and around the Columbus area.

A large tree on South Champion Avenue, on the city’s east side, crushed cars and took down power lines with it, between 1 and 2 a.m. Thursday morning.

Franklin County is reporting over 1,200 customer outages, while counties south and east of the are also experiencing outages, with Fairfield, Gallia, Hocking, Licking, Perry, and Vinton counties all experiencing outages affecting between 100 and 300 customers.

Athens County is also reporting approximately 1,200 customer outages while Meigs County in the southeast corner of the state has approximately 750 customers affected by outages.