12K city electric customers lose power in Friday storms; more severe weather possible today

Jeff Burlew, Tallahassee Democrat
Updated ·2 min read

11:45 p.m. update

At about 11:15 a.m., the National Weather Service issued a special weather statement for the Tallahassee area warning of possible 40 mph winds as heavy weather passes to the west and north. The advisory lasts until noon.

The area is also under a flood watch as heavy rains are expected. The heaviest may come between 1 and 4 p.m.

ORIGINAL STORY

Severe thunderstorms knocked out power to more than 12,000 city of Tallahassee accounts Friday night, just a week after a tornado outbreak left more than 100,000 customers in the dark in Leon County.

More storms are expected today, with damaging wind gusts, hail, isolated tornadoes and heavy rain possible. The storms are forecast to develop from the morning into the afternoon.

The outages occurred only hours after the city restored power to virtually all of its customers earlier in the day. Among customers impacted were many on the north side who didn't lose power a week ago.

Severe thunderstorms and heavy rain are possible today across much of North Florida, which is under a flood watch until 8 p.m.
Severe thunderstorms and heavy rain are possible today across much of North Florida, which is under a flood watch until 8 p.m.

"The severe thunderstorms moving through our area have caused power outages impacting over 12,000 customers," the city said in a text message around 11 p.m. "Crews are actively responding."

The city outage map, which malfunctioned during the tornado outbreak, showed the number of outages down to 1,754 as of 8 a.m. Saturday.

Meanwhile, much of the Big Bend and the Panhandle are under a flash flood watch as another round of storms is forecast to push through the area. Just like the storms last night, there is a slight risk (2 of 5) for severe thunderstorms and a slight risk (2 of 4) for excessive rainfall, according to the National Weather Service in Tallahassee.

Severe thunderstorms and heavy rain are possible today across much of North Florida, which is under a flood watch until 8 p.m.
Severe thunderstorms and heavy rain are possible today across much of North Florida, which is under a flood watch until 8 p.m.

"The main concerns will be isolated/scattered damaging wind gusts and hail in severe-warned storms," NWS said. "The tornado threat is low today, but one or two tornadoes across the area can't be ruled out."

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180. 

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: More storms possible today in Tallahassee after Friday night outages