Winter storms causing power outages in many areas
MISSISSIPPI (WCBI) – The severe winter weather has caused extensive damage in many areas throughout this weekend.
Some are still without power. That has electricity crews working overtime to get the lights and heat back on quickly.
The winter storm brought more ice than snow to the southern edge of our viewing area. And that ice has caused damage to trees and power lines, leaving many people in the dark and cold as temperatures are set to dip into the teens.
4-County Electric Power Association reports more than 4,000 homes were without power through one day in its territory.
This is coming through parts of nine counties, including large parts of the Ackerman and Choctaw County area.
“It’s mainly trees getting weighed down, and it’s falling,” Brian Clark said. “We started the morning with about 7,400 outages, and right now we are running about 4,000, so we have made a lot of improvement today. It is just going to take some time. The temperatures are dropping, I think the precipitation is gone, but the trees are breaking.”
One of the main reasons power went out was that trees were coming down, since most of them are filled with ice and snow, causing them to fall down on power lines.
“It was a problem for sure, we were stuck everywhere we went,” Kyle Elam said. “You stay soaking wet all night long, so it definitely adds a challenge to the deal.”
“We knew we were going to get bad weather,” Josh McMullen said. “We knew we were going to get a bunch of ice, and we knew that it was going to be raining, but can’t really expect anything. You never know what is going to happen with that and how it is going to play out in the end, but we were prepared. We have our trucks stocked up, ready to go, and that’s the best we can do.”
4 County crews have been out cutting numerous trees to prevent further damage.
CEO and General Manager of 4-County, Brian Clark said this round of severe weather is unique and more difficult than some others.
“If you look back over the year we had, this past spring, we had a storm hit us every weekend,” Clark said. “That is about two months that we worked three quarters of the weekend in those two months of the spring. That was rain, tornadoes, heavy winds but this one is different, it is not tornadoes and winds so much as it is just freezing temperatures with precipitation at the same time.”
United States Power Outage Map reports that as of Sunday more than 145,000 homes and businesses were without power in the state.
