Wind and rain wallop Mountain Empire

BRISTOL, Va. – High winds combined with heavy overnight rain disrupted power Wednesday to thousands of Tri-Cities homes.

Mother Nature’s double-punch also caused major traffic problems due to inoperative signal lights and lots of property damage from fallen trees, limbs and
debris.

“It was incredible just to see clumps of branches flying through the air,” John Shepelwich, a spokesman for Appalachian Power Co., said Wednesday while describing the winds – some recorded as fast as 58 mph – that tore through the region. Shepelwich said 100,000 of AEP’s customers across three states, including Virginia and Tennessee, lost power. Stretching from Kingsport, Tenn., to Huntington, W. Va., and Lynchburg, Va., the company’s service area includes Washington County, Va., and Abingdon, where Shepelwich said 13,000 homes were still without power Wednesday evening.

“It came through early, we had the heavy rain, we had rain and, or ice and the heavy winds last night,” Shepelwich said. “Then you had the second wind event that came through today.”

Those violent winds caused sections of Tennessee Route 75 and Interstate 81 to be temporarily closed, because of fallen trees and power lines, Sullivan County authorities said.

The winds also sent numerous trees and power lines hurling across Southwest Virginia and Northeastern Tennessee. In the Twin City, at least 11,000 customers of Bristol Virginia Utilities and Bristol Tennessee Essential Services lost power.

The winds reached their highest intensity about mid-morning, following hours of overnight rainfall that created scattered flooding across a wide area ranging from Chilhowie, Va., to Bluff City, Tenn.

Winds at the speeds recorded Wednesday can cause serious damage, Shepelwich said. “It can cause direct line damage, ... and cross arms can break on poles, things like that.”

Despite the havoc, as of early Wednesday evening various authorities reported no deaths or major injuries directly related to the weather system.

Tim Doyle, meteorologist for National Weather Service office in Morristown, Tenn., said the extreme wind and rain was a product of the heavy snowstorm that hit the Midwest earlier this week. Doyle said the Tri-Cities had received 2.01 inches of rainfall by early Wednesday and winds were consistently in the 50 mph range. But, he said, both conditions should ease or disappear today, which is expected to be dry with temperatures in the 30s and winds between 10 and 20 mph.

“Everything should die down considerably,” Doyle said.

Buddy Snodgrass, vice president of operations for Bristol Virginia Utilities, said Wednesday’s rain-wind combo left 4,000 customers without electrical power – and briefly knocked out five circuit breakers at various BVU substations.

BVU has more than 16,400 customers in Southwest Virginia.

“Fortunately, we were able to get the breakers back and operating fairly soon,” Snodgrass said. He said most BVU customers had their power restored within three hours of the first reported outages.

R. Michael Browder, chief executive officer for Bristol Tennessee Essential Services, said about 7,000 BTES customers had lost power at some point Wednesday. Browder said a transmission line serving two Holston Valley substations had been knocked out, as well as circuit breakers at several other BTES sites.

“Fortunately, we’ve been able to fix the issues at the substations and restore power to most homes pretty quickly,” Browder said. “But we still have hours of
work to do. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the weather doesn’t pick up again.”

BTES has some 33,000 customers across East Tennessee, including those in Bristol, Bluff City and other Sullivan County communities.

“It’s been widespread on our system,” Browder said.

Shepelwich said AEP’s power failures in the Glade Spring district alone, which includes Abingdon, resulted from 295 different outages.

“Our people have to fix 295 locations to get those 13,000 people back on line,” he said.

At Bristol Motor Speedway, the fierce winds and extreme rain led officials to cancel Wednesday evening’s Speedway in Lights show.

BMS spokesman Kevin Triplett said Speedway officials had worked out a plan that would have let visitors tour most displays along the four mile route while skipping a handful affected by high water levels. But when the winds began to intensify, BMS decided to simply cancel the evening event, Triplett said.

“When you’re a facility located near bodies of water, like we are, you learn to work around higher water levels in a few spots,” Triplett said. “But we can’t control the wind, and we felt it was best to close (Wednesday) for everyone’s comfort and safety.”

Triplett said BMS will resume Speedway in Lights today.

In another weather-related development, all Washington County, Va., public schools will be closed today, because of downed power lines causing power outages at the schools and downed trees across the community.

rbrown@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2512