Blustery winds bring outages, cold temps
Published 9:23 pm Thursday, December 11, 2008
Winds reaching up to 50 miles per hour Wednesday night and early Thursday left many local residents without power the next morning. Now, the county is bracing for bitter cold.
“They had put up a wind advisory for our area, and that’s what it was,” said Pike County Emergency Management Agency Director Larry Davis. “The front came in with 50 mph winds.”
Several areas in Pike County saw power outages early Thursday morning, and some were still not turned out by late in the afternoon.
Troy’s Utilities General Manager James Flowers said the power outages hit six or seven different areas scattered within the city.
The earliest was reported at 5:30 a.m., and by 9:30 a.m. Flowers said they had all been repaired.
Chellie Phillips, spokeswoman for South Alabama Electric Cooperative, said about 3,000 to 4,000 homes were without power in Pike, Crenshaw and Coffee counties combined.
And, she said power officials were still working to get power turned on in some places by the end of the day Thursday.
“They started around 5:30 a.m., and they were mostly from trees on lines,” Phillips said. “We had several broken poles, and crews have been out since then.”
However, in Brundidge, utility employees said they did not have any reported power outages.
Flowers said the outages in Troy were also caused from wind breaking limbs onto power lines.
North Alabama had forecasts for snow in the coming day, but Davis and National Weather Service Meteorologist Tara Golden said they did not predict any snow for Pike County.
“As far as Troy goes, we’re not expecting anything winter weathery,” Golden said. “There is a chance of rain, but it should be clearing out overnight.”
Some precipitation was predicted through the night Thursday, but Golden said weather should clear up by today.
The next time there is a slight chance of snow is early in the week next week, but Golden said it’s too far away to tell for sure.
“But temperatures are well above freezing, so don’t expect anything,” Golden said.