Austin area residents Thursday began cleaning up downed limbs and uprooted trees, broken glass and leftover hail after a powerful storm crashed through the area overnight.

As it made its way through Austin, the storm packed wind gusts up to 60 or 70 miles per hour at times.

In its aftermath, as many as 30,000 Austin Energy customers lost power. Service was restored to all but 10,000 customers Thursday afternoon, but Austin Energy officials say it could be Saturday before all electricity is restored.

The City of Austin and Red Cross opened a shelter at the Parque Zaragoza Recreation Center for those effected by power outages. The shelter will operate through Saturday.

Tarrytown cleans up

One of the hardest hit areas of Austin is Tarrytown, where streets were littered with leaves and snapped trees.

Much of the damage from Thursday morning's storms is visible to the naked eye -- uprooted trees, downed tree limbs and broken windows.

But some damage requires a closer look -- like taking the limb off this car to see that the car underneath is totaled -- or peeking through limbs to see a Volkswagon buried underneath.

The broken limbs show the fury of the overnight storm, but Caroline Lovern didn't need to see the damage to know it was extensive. She heard it.

"I heard a loud noise, and I thought it was the train going by, and I thought it was strange that I could hear the train with all the wind and everything so I grabbed my dog and got on the floor in the corner," she said.

After daylight, she realized what she heard was no train. Her front yard is now almost a jungle.

"I have to climb in front of the truck and over the bushes in order to get into my door," Lovern said. "Lucky. I have a friend and his mom's -- all her windows are broken out. I feel extremely lucky. It's just an obstacle."

At the height of the storms, a limb came crashing down, missing an electrical pole by the narrowest of margins.

"Heard the storm, saw the hail, which was large, it was like tennis ball and golf balls. I didn't notice until a neighbor came by and said by the way, there's a tree on your car!" said Tricia Hermes.

East Austin not spared by severe storms

The sounds of severe weather were replaced with sounds of steam cleaning in one East Austin neighborhood.

“This was the first window that shattered,” said Bryna Van Eis.

The double-paned windows in Van Eis' home didn't stand a chance.

“Glass and hail was flying down the stairs,” she said.

Still, she ran up stairs to check on her 2-year-old daughter.

“We opened the door, she was fine and sleeping through the whole thing -- I don't know how because it was loud,” said Van Eis.

This new neighborhood at the old Mueller Airport site looks very different now. Tiny trees uprooted and car windshields were not repairable.

“I looked out the window and could barely see across the street,” said Brian Dolezal, home damaged.

Neighbors were in awe over the damage.

“We had golf ball sized hail inside the house -- 13 windows were destroyed,” said Dolezal.

Hail also busted nearly every window at the Windcrest Apartment Complex on Manor Road. At the headquarters for the American Red Cross of Central Texas, the storms damaged a brand new roof.

"We're gonna need help," said spokesperson Elaine Acker. “We're trying to get patch work done on the roof so we can at least avoid more damage.”

Two Red Cross emergency vehicles were also damaged.

“It was a freak storm,” said Dolezal.

At the Van Eis house, glass was even found inside the children's books.

“It just came with fierce in it and left as quickly as it came,” Van Eis said.

But neighbors say the clean-up could take some time.

Hail falls across Austin

Residents in West Campus reported seeing golf ball size hail and lots of it. They're still busy cleaning up a lot of broken glass. Hail shattered several windows at this apartment complex on the corner of 24th and Guadalupe.

Some KVUE viewers turned into storm trackers as the rough weather rolled through overnight, and many sent in photographs of hail that varied in size from peas to softballs.

Tarrytown resident James Greenway said his driveway was covered. He is among the residents who shared their storm experience with KVUE. From mothball size that shattered a car's back windshield in Round Rock to golf ball size stacked 3 feet deep in Central Austin -- hail of all different sizes hit the area.

"The size wasn't so impressive. It was the volume. Quarter inch, some inch we didn't have like softball or baseball, but we had drifts. We had hail 12 to 18 inches in height," Greenway said.

The National Weather Service has an official list of hail size descriptions. There are coins -- including the penny, nickel, quarter and half dollar -- and there's food including peas, walnuts, hen's eggs and grapefruits. Size is determined by the strength of the updraft.

"An updraft of about 55 miles per hour will support hail of about pea size, but when you have an updraft in the storm of 90 to 100 mph then you can have hail as big as baseballs," said KVUE Storm Team Chief Meteorologist Mark Murray.

"A little bigger than a golf ball and about almost the size of a tennis ball," is how Wayne Cook described the different sized hail he picked up from his front yard near Loyola Lane and Manor Road. He says it was a storm he won't soon forget.

"All of a sudden I started hearing these poundings hitting the roof, and then it got louder harder and faster," said Cook.

Damage at the Capitol

The overnight storms also knocked down several large trees at the state Capitol and blew out windows in the dome.

Seven trees, including a large live oak, were uprooted and destroyed. More than a dozen others took light to heavy damage in storms through early Thursday.

Julie Fields with the Texas Preservation Board says workers are trying to determine which trees can be saved. Fields says large areas of the Capitol grounds will remain closed to pedestrians while crews remove fallen trees that pose a safety hazard.

The storm blew out windows on the fifth floor of the Capitol dome. That left shards in the rotunda and damaged the portrait of Albert Horton, the state's first lieutenant governor who also served as acting governor for six months in 1846.

Fields says some of the fallen trees will be saved for future use, such as gavels used by lawmakers and wood coins sold in the Capitol gift shop.

The City of Austin also closed all but one of its public golf courses because of severe tree damage. The only one still open is Roy Kizer in Southeast Austin.

City officials say crews are working their way through neighborhoods to move limbs and debris from roads. Residents should leave branches where city crews leave it, and Pay-As-You-Throw customers should:

-- Put limbs less than 5 feet long and 3 inches in diameter out for collection on their scheduled days over the next few weeks.

-- Call 3-1-1 for collection of large branches downed in the storm.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report