Hundreds of customers remained without power Wednesday afternoon after a line of fast-moving thunderstorms rolled through North Texas a day earlier.

About 3,600 customers remained without electricity and power was expected to be restored by late evening, Oncor said. At the peak, as many as 150,000 customers were without service because of the storm.

A storm system in Oklahoma that was expected to bring high winds of up to 70 mph had weakened considerably by late morning and was no longer expected to affect the Dallas area, the National Weather Service said. A separate group of storms may come through the Dallas area in the afternoon, but those storms were not expected to be severe.

More storms were expected Thursday and Friday.

The late-morning Tuesday storms brought inch-an-hour rainfall and straight-line winds gusting into the 70-mph range, according to the weather service. The Tuesday temperature high of 88 degrees came right before the storms and caused temperatures to drop about 20 degrees in parts of Dallas-Fort Worth.

Temperature highs in the Dallas area were expected to reach the low to mid 90s today, depending on whether the storms arrived, Mr. Moore said.

More than 1.3 inches of rain fell in McKinney, and three-quarters of an inch in Terrell on Tuesday. But there was no measurable rain reported at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, the weather service's official recording station.

The bad weather forced an early end to the Dallas Cowboys' pre-season practice and disrupted sports camps across North Texas. The rains caused minor flooding on roadways.

The high winds were blamed for the collapse of a wall at Bell Helicopters in Hurst, injuring one worker. And in downtown Dallas, gusts peeled the panels off a billboard near Main Street and Central Expressway, dumping debris on a parking lot full of cars.

At Cirque, a new apartment building across from American Airlines Center, two men washing windows got caught in the storm and had to climb into the building at least 10 floors off the ground, said Larry Watson, a building concierge. Neither was injured.

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Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones leaves the practice field Tuesday at Valley Ranch.

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The Collin County fire marshal reported that several communities in the area had lost power, but there was no widespread damage or injuries.

Audie Casey, an environmental worker for the city of McKinney, said he drove around the city just before noon and was deluged with heavy rains.

"You have to drive out in the middle of the road because the water is so deep in the ditches," Mr. Casey said. "If you have a small car, you would lose control of your vehicle. It's amazing how fast it has come down."

Mr. Casey said emergency vehicles fanned out across the city.

"The rain is so thick that all you can see is the flashing lights of fire trucks," he said.

Staff writers Michael Young, Dan X. McGraw, Kimberly Durnan, Ian McCann, Michael A. Lindenberger, Rachel Slade and Mariana Greene contributed to this report.