A line of violent thunderstorms, with winds as high as 60 miles per hour, produced downed trees and power lines Thursday night throughout much of Leflore and Carroll counties.
Larry Griggs, executive vice president of operations for Greenwood Utilities, reported that an outage occurred around 6:30 p.m. after a tree limb fell onto a major circuit, which supplies electricity to about 500 customers from Park Avenue to Robert E. Lee Drive.
It took crews about 45 minutes to restore power to the area, he said.
At around the same time, a smaller outage affecting about 50 customers occurred near Basket Street, Griggs said.
Service was restored Thursday night to that area as well.
The storm system, while powerful, produced only 0.37 inch of rainfall Greenwood-Leflore Airport. The airport recorded wind gusts of 45 miles per hour.
Ed Tarver, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson, said trees and utility poles along Mississippi 7 near Itta Bena were reported as being down as the result of the storm. In Carroll County, trees were reported being down on County Roads 100 and 193, he said.
Troy Brown, director of the Greenwood-Leflore Emergency Management Agency, said that although the storm packed lots of energy, it produced little damage.
He reported that a telephone pole was down on County Road 305. Not far away, at the intersection of County Roads 513 and 305, two trees had fallen in the roadway. Those trees had been cleared by this morning, he said.
Susan Bailey, Greenwood director of public works, said the brevity of the storm front helped to minimize damage.
Bailey said she didn’t have crews out Thursday night. Instead, she and two supervisors patrolled, looking for trouble spots.
“We fared well. We had a few limbs down, one on Grand Boulevard,” she said.
