A severe rain storm left more than 167,000 homes and businesses without power in the Houston area on Tuesday afternoon, according to utility websites. Houston-based CenterPoint Energy reported more than 143,000 customers in the dark, mostly on the north side of the city, while Entergy Corp's Texas utility reported 24,000 outages, north and east of Houston. A CenterPoint spokeswoman said the outages were being caused by high wind knocking tree limbs into power lines. No timetable for power restoration was available as the storm moved to the south.