Powerful winds continued to batter Los Angeles, Las Vegas and other southwestern U.S. locales today — downing trees, delaying flights and leaving hundreds of thousands without power.

Wind gusts stronger than 225km/h — which would be equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane — have been measured on the Sierra Crest mountain ridge, according to the National Weather Service. Lower-lying areas also have been hit hard by Santa Ana winds, with 130km/h gusts expected in southern California.

It’s all part of a system the federal weather agency called “the strongest easterly wind event in the past several years.” In southern California, Santa Ana wind is a condition in which strong winds descend to the Pacific Coast around Los Angeles from inland desert regions, according to the weather service said.

The National Weather Service has issued high-wind warnings for large stretches of southwestern and eastern California, as well as much of Nevada and parts of Utah. Wind advisories are in effect for much of the rest of those three states.

As of 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET), Southern California Edison was reporting more than 210,000 households without power. The hardest hit areas in the utility’s service area include San Gabriel, San Bernardino, Alhambra, Altadena, Arcadia, El Monte, La Canada Flintridge, Monrovia and Sierra Madre.

The Los Angeles Department of Water of Power reported that, as of that same time, about 129,000 of its 1 million customers did not have electricity. The department added, in a press release, that it has over 100 crews responding to more than 1,000 incidents thought to be responsible for the outages.

Los Angeles International Airport experienced a partial power outage and significant delays Wednesday night, as well as 20 domestic and three international inbound flight diverted.

As of early today, that airport appeared to be operating normally with minimal delays, said Marshall Lowe, a spokesman for the Los Angeles World Airport Response Coordination Center. The same couldn’t necessarily be said for some others, with Lowe noting that there was a roughly 1-hour delay for flights destined for Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport.

Gale warnings were in effect for some southern California coastal locales, while heavy snow fell over the central and southern Rockies as part of the same system, according to the weather service.

Fire hazards were another potential problem, with the combination of strong winds and moderate-to-low humidity spurring Red Flag Warnings through 6 p.m. PT Friday for Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Downed power lines adjacent to Occidental College in Los Angeles started a two-acre grass fire and prompted a precautionary evacuation of those nearby, the Los Angeles County fire department said. No one was injured.

– CNN