Stronger storms, possibly tornadoes, anticipated Thursday

Stronger storms, possibly tornadoes, anticipated Thursday

Downed trees, power lines reported Tuesday

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Numerous downed trees and power lines were reported Tuesday afternoon in Philadelphia after a line of strong, gusty winds and rain moved through with severe weather forecast for Thursday.

“We know that there were some very high winds that came through and blew a very large tree down on Poplar Avenue and it tore down the primary power line and it also landed on someone’s car,” said Kurt Morgan, general manager of Philadelphia Utilities.

More than 500 customers mostly in the southern part of the county initially appeared to be impacted, according to Central Electric’s outages map, but were restored Tuesday.

“It was unnerving, to say the least,” Morgan said. “We had very high winds for a solid 20 minutes. We are working on restoring power now. Estimated completion time is undetermined.”

Morgan said workers had just restored the power on Poplar Avenue at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.

About 300 households east of town were still without power, and utilities workers were working to get them restored as soon as possible, Morgan said.

Philadelphia Mayor James A. Young said more downed trees were reported on East Myrtle Street where a power pole also came down knocking out electric power and phone service.

“No injuries have been reported,” Young said. “There was some damage to a couple of vehicles from trees falling.”

Severe weather forecast Thursday

Mike Edmonston, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson, said Tuesday’s strong winds were part of a line of thunderstorms moving through the state.

“You can consider this like Round 1,” Edmonston said. “Thursday could be quite an event with maybe some tornadoes and some significant, not just wind, but hail. I wouldn’t expect much in the way of hail until almost Wednesday night.”

Edmonston said the NWS had issued advisories on Monday night anticipating Tuesday’s winds for Neshoba and other parts of the state as the weather system moved through the area.

“It was anticipated and there was a graphic talking about gusty winds, and they can bring down limbs and our graphic actually says weak trees and weak tree limbs may break and fall,” Edmonston said, adding the ground in Neshoba County is more saturated than in some other parts of the state.

Edmonston said the weather should pick up again Wednesday afternoon and evening.

“By the time it gets to Neshoba it will be later than 11 p.m. (Wednesday), so I wouldn’t expect to see anything come back north of Interstate 20 before 7 p.m. but through 7 p.m. to midnight there might be a chance for some isolated severe storms across Neshoba and that will include hail up to quarter size and wind gusts of 60 mph,” Edmonston said. “It is not really that favorable for a tornado tomorrow night, but we can’t rule one out.”

Thursday, however, could be more favorable for tornadoes, he said.

“Looks like primetime for Neshoba would probably be from 2 to 6 p.m. on Thursday,” Edmonston said. “I can guarantee almost you will be under a tornado watch for then and will be anticipating larger hail up to golf ball size as damaging winds up to 70 mph and tornadoes some significant will also be possible on Thursday. Thursday will be big. The main risk will occur on Thursday and then Friday is looking dry because this stuff will be tapering off Thursday night from the west.”






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