KYLE MURPHYStaff Writer

The winds made an impact in Tullahoma this past Friday as the Tullahoma Utilities Authority (TUA) had crews out in the community addressing power outages.

According to Allen Potter, TUA Manager of Engineering and Operations, he said the main cause of the damage and power outages were by the winds and trees falling. Per Potter, one of the first incidents TUA responded to was tree that fell. Falling trees were blamed for taking the lives of two people during the Friday storms, one in Sumner County and another in northern Alabama. There were no injuries reported in Tullahoma due to the storm.

“We had a large tree at the intersection of Turkey Creek Road and West Lincoln Street, which caused a poll to break,” Potter said. “That interrupted power for about 950 customers.”

Other areas that TUA responded included near Tara Estates and Country Club Drive, where there overhead power lines down due to the high winds and trees, and South Franklin Street.

Potter said TUA crews and linemen were able to restore power and gets the systems together by 2 a.m. Saturday, March 4.

The line of duty didn’t stop for TUA as it send four of its linemen to assist Springfield Electric Saturday morning to provide mutual aid and assistance to restoring power in Springfield.

The damage was caused by a brief but strong line of storms that marched eastward through Coffee County around the middle of the day on Friday. The storms were part of a warned line of severe weather which forecasters feared could spawn tornadoes. However, no tornadic activity was reported as result of the line but strong winds were still able to wreak havoc on the mid-state as Tullahoma saw gusts in excess of 50 miles per hour. Many surrounding school systems, including the Coffee County School System, closed for the day given the call of severe weather.

While tornadoes were not part of the problem Friday, an intense low pressure system is what meteorologists say caused the particularly strong winds, especially in areas slightly north of Tullahoma like Metro Nashville. Typically, the intensity of low pressure systems are measured by how low the pressure at the center of the storm system falls. Lower pressures at the center mean the stronger the storm system as air rushes from high pressure to low pressure zones.

During the Friday storm the pressure at the center of the storm fell to around 980 millibars which is a mark that can be seen in some Category I hurricanes and is an unusual mark for this area mid-south.

Hardest hit was the Nashville area where 115,000 NES customers were without power. Metro Nashville contributed the lion’s share of the state’s 147,000 outages.