The second line of sudden, severe thunderstorms to move through Gilmer County over the past few weeks toppled trees and caused widespread power outages last Wednesday night and early Thursday morning.
This was particularly true in an area that includes Highway 382, Highway 282 and Coosawattee River Resort, noted Gilmer Fire Chief Daniel Kauffman.
“There was a big increase in call volume as the weather came in on Wednesday evening. It brought a lot of trees down on roadways and on power lines. The Eagle Mountain side of Coosawattee sustained pretty heavy damage. There were approximately four trees down on homes, mostly on the Eagle Mountain side,” Kauffman said. “There were also quite a few trees down on Hap Holt Road off Highway 282. They actually had one person stuck in their vehicle who couldn’t get out because of all the trees. One of our battalion chiefs estimated they had to cut, off and on, (through almost) 2 miles of trees that were across the road to get to the vehicle.”
Wednesday’s storm was not classified as a tornado by the weather service, noted Kauffman, but had really strong winds.
Keith Kucera, Gilmer EMA director, said this particular storm, which followed a destructive string of late July weather that brought tornadoes to Pickens County, “popped in on everybody.”
“That was significant weather that rolled through (last week). We were kind of taken off guard,” Kucera said.
“We only got one weather statement at 7:02 p.m. Normally we get (them) during the day,” Kauffman added.
For Amicalola EMC (AEMC), the biggest number of power outages stretched from the Highway 382 area east to the Cartecay area off Highway 52 East. In Gilmer County, 6,211 AEMC customers were initially without power.
Crews had restored service to a large number of those customers by 6 a.m. Thursday morning, when another line of storms moved through, noted Stacey Fields, AEMC representative. At least 12 power poles were broken throughout the county by last week’s storms, Fields said.
“We lost service to the entire Quill substation for a period of time on Wednesday evening. That greatly increased the number of members affected by outages. This station serves most all of eastern Gilmer County including the Big Creek, Roy Road, Clear Creek, Blackberry Mountain, Cartecay and surrounding areas,” she added. “The loss of power to the substation was due to a transmission line issue. Amicalola only has distribution lines.”
Another sudden summer thunderstorm pelted the county with heavy rain and wind late Sunday, Aug. 13. Unlike the weather events of last week, Gilmer Fire and Rescue received no calls from that storm, noted Kauffman.
“They were watching the lightning anticipating it was going to be busy, but there was nothing,” he added. “We didn’t have any calls for service related to weather or trees down, which is kind of odd.”
The Sunday storms did require response from power crews to repair more downed lines. Gilmer County had a total of 6,295 outages Sunday night. Affected areas included Highway 282, Pleasant Gap Road, Chatsworth Highway, Boardtown Road, Highway 52 and the north part of Highway 515.
“We’d like to thank our members for their patience and support as our line crews have battled storm after storm during the past few weeks,” Fields said.
Although there’s been some particularly strong patterns of severe weather to hit the Gilmer area this summer — likely abetted by the extreme, near 100-degree heat — none of the recent storms resulted in any fatalities or severe injury calls, Kauffman noted.
“We’ve been pretty fortunate (with that),” he said.