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July 6, 2012

Strong winds topple trees, power lines

From Staff Reports Dalton Daily Citizen

Reports of downed trees, fallen power lines and small fires flooded area 911 centers Thursday evening as winds ripped through Whitfield and Murray counties.

A Whitfield 911 operator said there were reports of “a couple of sightings” of at least one tornado, but she said the damage was “all over the city and county” and didn’t appear to be based in a single area.

National Weather Service meteorologist Alex Gibbs, checking a series of radar screens and other information, said around 9 p.m. Thursday he could “confidently say there was no tornado” as the storms were passing through Dalton between about 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.

“As far as I know, there was no rotation or anything like that, and the environment was definitely not conducive for tornadoes,” Gibbs said.

He said the winds were “outflow” from the dying storms in the region. Gibbs said that because there was almost no rainfall in Whitfield County, he couldn’t provide an accurate estimate of the wind speeds, but his guess from the damage reports they’d received were for winds of 60-65 mph.

“We do have a number of outages in Whitfield and Murray counties,” Jeff Rancudo, communications specialist with North Georgia Electric Membership Corp., said Thursday night.

“Our communication systems were down for a while, so we don’t have an exact number of power outages yet,” said Rancudo, who was without power at his home in Varnell.

“There are a lot of trees down, and crews have been dispatched to the areas where the lines are down and they will work through the night or until they get the power back on,” he said.

North Georgia EMC serves 98,000 customers in seven counties in Northwest Georgia.

Dalton Utilities spokeswoman Lori McDaniel said at about 9:45 p.m. there were an estimated 800 to 1,000 of the service provider’s 13,000 customers without electricity. Four circuits were down in various areas — Dug Gap, downtown Dalton at Valley Drive and Emery Street, an area around Hamilton Medical Center and the area around North Oaks off Cleveland Highway.

She said three electrical crews and extra tree crews were out working and were expected to stay on hand as more storms were expected later in the night.

Whitfield County Emergency Management Agency Director Claude Craig referred questions to the 911 center because he was out of town.

Murray County Emergency Management Agency Director Dwayne Bain said there were reports of building damage inside Chatsworth and power lines down as well as numerous people without electricity.

Commenters on The Daily Citizen’s Facebook page reported damage in Beaverdale, Crandall, Rocky Face, Dawnville, Varnell, Dalton, Tunnel Hill, Chatsworth and other communities.

No injuries associated with the weather were reported.

 

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