By Lorrie Ross
Staff Writer
Summer thunderstorms sometimes bring damaging winds and lightning, sometimes leading to unwanted disruptions in electricity.
A storm which blew through Clay County on Saturday, June 7 came and went quickly, but it wiped out power for several thousand of Blue Ridge Mountain EMC’s customers.
According to BRMEMC Manager of Media and Communications Kelly L. Crawford, approximately 7,500 customers were without power after the weekend storm. Most of the outages began in the late afternoon on Saturday, and at 6:27 p.m. the BRMEMC Facebook page posted this message with a map:
“This weather event is causing widespread outages. Please remember if you see downed lines to stay away. Our crews are on standby and as soon as it’s safe for them to be out working they’ll begin assessing the damage and restoring power.”
Crawford said the power outages occurred from 18 broken power poles, along with several spans of power line down. She explained the majority of the outages were created when trees came down, but there were also a couple of lightning strikes.
As power began to be restored, some BRMEMC Internet customers said they were without Internet. “We don’t have a total number of fiber outages at this time, but if the member is without power they will be without fiber,” Crawford added. “Generally, after a power outage has been restored the fiber customer will need to reboot their router to restore their connection. If that doesn’t automatically restore the fiber connection, they will need to contact technical support to troubleshoot and potentially have fiber technicians come out.”
Crawford encouraged customers to utilize outage reporting services offered by BRMEMC. “Our members can report outages through phone calls and utilize the outage texting service if they have that set up,” she advised. “We always suggest they keep cell phones charged, as long as they have cellular service, to access our online outage map, which is updated continuously.” That may be found at: www.Outage.brmemc.com.
“I also suggest they reference our power outage FAQs page on our website at: www.BRMEMC.com/power-outage-faq,” Crawford said.
BRMEMC covers a five county area in North Carolina and North Georgia, so power outages can be many miles apart. Some customers were without power for several hours Saturday night, while others were without power a lot of Sunday morning. Yet crews worked throughout the night to restore all customers’ power as soon as possible.
Weather observations from the National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, showed wind gusts of 46 miles per hour, with sustained winds around 20 miles per hour, for the time period when BRMEMC noted so many power outages. With strong winds, saturated soil may release tree roots more quickly, which can result in more downed trees, even with short-lived storms.
This is summer storm season. The predicted weather forecast at: www.Weather.gov shows for Thursday, June 12, a chance of showers and thunderstorms before 11 p.m. and mostly cloudy with a low around 62 and calm winds. The chance of precipitation is 30 percent.
For Friday, there is a slight chance of thunderstorms before 8 a.m. then a chance of showers and thunderstorms between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. Showers are likely and possibly a thunderstorm after 2 p.m. It will be mostly cloudy, with calm wind and a high near 83. The chance of precipitation is 70 percent.
For Friday night, showers are likely with a thunderstorm possible before 8 p.m. Then a higher chance of showers and thunderstorms between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. It will be mostly cloudy with a low around 65 and 60 percent chance of precipitation..
Saturday has an 80 percent chance of precipitation with a high near 84. Chance of precipitation is 90 percent for Father’s Day, Sunday, June 15.