Brutal thunderstorms interrupted Mother’s Day Weekend this year, leaving 30,000 individuals without electricity. Trees and power lines alike fell to the 60+ MPH wind speeds, hail and lightning across southern Illinois and into south eastern Missouri.
By Sunday night, almost all homes had power restored, however. Ameren restored power to over two-thirds of those who experienced outages by Saturday evening, prioritizing large populations.
“Several sub-transmission lines were damaged and our focus is on getting those larger systems back on line first so we can restore power for the greatest number of customers in the shortest period of time,โ said John Barud, Senior Director of Division Operations, Ameren Illinois, in a written statement.
The inclement weather downed a total of 15 sub-transmission lines, says Ameren, who went to work immediately fixing the damage. On Sunday morning, it was just the Metro East, who was hit hardest, left in the dark.
All but 360 were able to spend Mother’s Day evening with the lights on. Those in the Collinsville, Highland, Wood River and Marine areas were last to see power restored.
Clarkson Valley of St. Louis county received the final brunt of the storm, experiencing the last small outages on Sunday night. Storms were expected to continue into the week til Wednesday, but has subsided to more pleasant spring weather.
Quick restoration was due in large part to planning on behalf of Ameren. The company had placed electric utility contractors and employees on alert status after monitoring the weekend’s weather system.
No injuries were reported. This is likely to be only the first of severe storm of the season. To keep your family safe and prepared during thunderstorms, adhere to government recommendations.
