Area residents woke up Wednesday morning to severe thunderstorm warnings and even a tornado warning in Washington County as the latest line of severe weather pushed through the area.
Washington County appeared to have taken the brunt of the storm with one mobile home destroyed with several farm buildings.
The storm brought down a number of trees and tree limbs as well as snapping off power poles. Tri-County Electric Cooperative was hit hard in Washington County where most of their 3,000 outages occurred. General Manager Luke Johnson says the number without power was reduced to 458 by mid-morning. After two broken poles were replaced in the Lively Grove area, those without power was reduced to 26 spread out in various locations across Marion, Jefferson and Washington County. Ameren Illinois reported just a few spotty outages.
A 66 mile per hour wind gust was recorded at the Salem Airport. The strong winds brought down large trees on North College at Bryan, North Hotze Road in Beer Can Alley and on South Washington south of Broadway. Salem City Crews were called out to clear the streets. Many homeowners had their own downed trees and limbs to deal with.
The Salem Water Plant recorded 37 hundredths of an inch of rain through seven Wednesday morning while the Centralia water plant had 42 hundredths. One gate of Raccoon Lake had to be open six inches to get rid of excess water resulting in some flooding issues downstream.
