Severe storms knock out power for 27,000 in Fairfax County

Severe thunderstorms hit Fairfax County during the evening commute and cut power to more than 27,000 Dominion Energy customers, leaving trees, wires and roadways snarled across several communities. McLean, Dunn Loring and Burke were among the hardest-hit areas as the storms pushed through one of Northern Virginia’s busiest travel windows.

The storms came in two waves and triggered multiple National Weather Service Severe Thunderstorm Warnings. By about 6:30 p.m., Dominion was reporting just over 27,000 Fairfax County customers in the dark, a number that translated quickly into traffic problems, stalled routines and outages that affected homes as well as businesses across the Washington, D.C. region.

Fairfax County later labeled the event the Burke Microburst Incident. The National Weather Service determined the damage in Burke came from a severe thunderstorm downburst, or microburst, rather than a tornado, and estimated peak wind gusts at 90 mph around Lake Royal, about a mile northwest of Burke. The county said it was working with response and recovery partners to assess damage, restore services and support residents.

Local reporting from the storm showed the scale of the destruction in Burke neighborhoods, where roof damage, crushed cars, downed trees and downed wires were reported, along with road closures as crews cleared debris. The outage also underscored how quickly severe weather can disrupt densely populated suburbs where traffic signals, cooling systems, remote work and neighborhood businesses all depend on steady electricity.

The Fairfax County outage followed another major disruption earlier in June, when more than 21,200 Dominion customers lost power during thunderstorms. Together, the two episodes showed how repeated summertime storms can produce large-scale outages in Northern Virginia even when the worst weather lasts only a short time.