Tropical Storm Olga suddenly formed in the Gulf of Mexico on October 25 and started its quick trek north. Initial reports on the storm indicated landfall would bring torrential rains and possible tornadoes to all of Mississippi. On Saturday Olga passed through Scott County and left significant damage and thousands without power in its wake.
As Olga approached Central Mississippi early Saturday morning, there were very few weather warnings concerning this storm. Most weather reports warned of thunderstorms, flash flooding and possible tornadoes. Few, if any, warned of Olga’s damaging winds that would ultimately uproot and bring down hundreds of trees throughout the county, and leave thousands of people without power.
Scott County Emergency Management Director Mike Marlow said Olga surprised everyone. “We were aware of the storm moving into the area, but there were no significant weather warnings sent out prior to the storm hitting the area early Saturday morning. At 4:39 a.m. on Saturday morning I received a severe weather update from Mississippi Emergency Management Agency that showed Scott County should expect “marginal” weather which is the lowest risk category.”
When the storm moved into the local area on Saturday it brought damaging winds with even higher wind gusts. The National Weather Service reported that Scott County had sustained winds of 40-45 mph with wind gusts as high as 60 mph. The sustained winds, in addition to the overly saturated soil, combined to down trees throughout the county with a large number of trees falling in the city of Forest.
As a result of the falling limbs and trees, customers of all three energy companies suffered through hours without power, and there are still citizens in Scott County without power on Tuesday.
“Central Electric still has approximately 980 customers without power in their coverage area,” Marlow said Tuesday. “We do not have a total for the number of Scott County homes that lost power, but it was in the thousands.”
Mississippi Power and Southern Pine also service the local area with electricity. Both companies had hundreds of Scott County customers lose power for most of the day Saturday, but was able to restore power to all of their customers by Sunday afternoon.
Many people throughout the county, and a majority of Forest were without power starting around 8:15 a.m. Saturday morning. Linemen and power crews from around the state traveled to Forest to assist with repairing the power infrastructure.
Andy Rafferty with Chain Electric Company in Hattiesburg said his crew was called to Forest on Saturday and was still working on power lines in the city on Monday. “We got here Saturday just after noon and we have been working all around the local area since. We have been taking breaks to get some sleep, but other than sleeping and eating we have been out here repairing lines and poles as fast as we can.”
Marlow said the soggy ground and sustained winds led to down trees and power outages. “The soil being so saturated played a large role in the number of downed trees we had in the area.” He said. “All the rain we had really softened the ground and when we got those sustained winds for hours it started dropping trees everywhere.”
“No warning about the high winds was available when I checked at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday morning. The high sustained winds caught everyone by surprise. Even with the warnings we had, the high winds were not a concern until the storm was here,” Marlow added.
The power company crews are hard at work repairing the damage, and city of Forest workers were busy all over the city cleaning up debris and clearing roads that were blocked by downed trees at presstime Tuesday.
