Nearly 300 homes in Winnipeg are without power on Wednesday after a powerful thunderstorm rolled through the area.

Manitoba Hydro spokesperson Bruce Owen said the storm caused 62 individual outages in the city, with major outages in the River Heights, St. Boniface, St. Vital and Tyndall Park neighbourhoods.

The initial outages affected more than 8,500 customers. That number had dropped to 272 by 10:15 p.m.

"We have had reports of some lightning hitting our poles in the River Heights area," Owen said.

"With the high winds and the rain, the trees, with their foliage, they became moisture-laden, and in the high wind the branches act like sails and come into contact with our power lines."

He said people who see downed lines should stay away from them and contact 911. Customers can report power outages online.

Customers also lost power across southern and central Manitoba, including 98 in the Reynolds area and 26 in the Springfield area. Power to those regions was restored later Wednesday evening.

T-Storm rolling right over DT Wpg <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cbcmb?src=hash">#cbcmb</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/mbstorm?src=hash">#mbstorm</a> <a href="https://t.co/gAsk4SKkfW">pic.twitter.com/gAsk4SKkfW</a> —@johnsauderCBC

Owen said crews are responding to the outages.

"If we can find where a major line is affected by, say, a broken tree branch, it might just be a matter of taking off that tree branch, re-energizing the line and a large number of people are restored almost immediately, but we have to get there first," he said.

He said the utility has to make choices about which areas will get attention first.

"Given the magnitude of what we're dealing with right now — at this point, 62 individual outages — we have to prioritize where we go first," he said.

"We'll try to restore the greatest number of people we can, but we also have to restore service to major services. For instance, during the daytime, schools or hospitals, businesses, water treatment … [and] discharge stations, pumping stations — that's the first priority."

More lightning later Wednesday evening would slow down the process, he added.

"We appreciate our customers' patience, we understand their frustration, but we can only work when it's safe," he said.