A severe thunderstorm packing wind gusts of up to 70 mph barreled through Tallahatchie County Sunday night, leaving scattered pockets of damage in its wake.
The brute force of the wind uprooted or felled trees, knocked down utility poles and power lines, and blew electrical transformers, causing widespread power outages in the county.
“From what I can gather, we lost power to about 85% of the people countywide,” said Thad Roberts, director of the Tallahatchie County Emergency Management Agency.
About 1,142 Entergy customers in Charleston and 709 more in the Tutwiler area were plunged into darkness just before 10 p.m. Sunday due to outages caused by damaged utility poles.
Power to Tutwiler was restored Monday afternoon.
It was a different story in Charleston, where a half-dozen utility poles along Highway 32 just east of the city were snapped or blown over. The power outage lasted until 8:34 Tuesday night.
About 2,800 local customers of Tallahatchie Valley Electric Power Association lost power, Roberts said.
Some residents suffered roof damage to homes and outbuildings, and trees fell on roads.
“We had trees blown down all over the county,” said Roberts. “We could start a sawmill around here if we could get all of those trees together. We’d have a pretty good pile of lumber.”
Overall, however, the EMA director said “we’re fortunate that we did not have the loss of life and the damage some other places in the state had.”
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency reported Friday that 14 people died in the state as a result of Sunday night’s severe weather. In addition, 1,206 homes and more than 75 businesses were impacted, according to damage reports submitted to MEMA from 33 counties.
IN THE PHOTO: The crossbars of a utility pole are suspended in midair Monday morning after being snapped off the top of the pole during Sunday night's severe thunderstorm. Six poles on Highway 32 just east of Charleston were damaged, several having been blown over, knocking out power to all of Charleston for 46 hours. (Photo by Clay McFerrin)
