‘Tornado’ sparks fear but moves on
Heavy rain and lightning keeps work crews busy but little damage is reported around the county.
A brief tornado warning Wednesday sent people scurrying for safety and sparked a swirl of rumors, but few weather-related problems were reported.
Tim Herrington, Floyd County’s emergency management agency director, said he fielded some worried calls from the Coosa and Berry College areas — and the schools got to practice their safety drill.
“There was some cloud rotation picked up by the National Weather Service radar. That’s why they issued the warning,” Herrington said. “But it never made it to the ground, and then it moved up toward Whitfield County.”
The NWS is expected in Dalton today to see if the damage can tell them if it was a low-level tornado or merely a microburst that blew through the county, he said.
In Floyd County, the heavy rain Wednesday was a weaker follow-up to the storms of Tuesday night.
“We were expecting rain, but we weren’t expecting that much lightning,” Herrington said.
“That’s the most I’ve seen in a long time, and we were still recovering when the second round of storms came in.”
According to his notes, six houses were affected by lightning strikes — either through fires or blown out power circuits — and the county public works building on Blacks Bluff Road lost its internet and phone service. There also were 10 reports of trees down on power lines and flooding on East 18th Street near Crane Street.
County Public Works Director Michael Skeen said crews were out until midnight Tuesday, removing toppled trees that were blocking several roads.
Booger Hollow and Jackson Chapel roads were hit the worst.
“This morning we were out cleaning up the brush,” Skeen said Wednesday. “We also have a lot of gravel and dirt driveways that do what we call “a blowout” when it rains hard. It washes into the road, so we were taking care of that and cleaning up debris.”
Rome Public Works Director Chris Jenkins said trees fell on Nixon Avenue, Horseleg Creek Road and Flannery Street, but the city wasn’t hit as hard as the unincorporated area.
“We had some flooding from grates stopped up by debris,” Jenkins said. “Any time it rains and storms we get calls about flooding and trees down, but this was nothing major, nothing uncommon.”
Herrington said residents should download the Floyd County Emergency Management Agency cellphone app to get real-time reports on local conditions. It includes Georgia EMA information, he said, but it’s one of only three in the state tailored specifically for one county.
The rest of the week is forecast to be warm and mostly sunny, although storms may be coming back through over the weekend.
“I’m hoping we can get back to normal,” Skeen said. “We had to pull crews off paving and didn’t get much done this week.”
As soon as it’s dry enough to put down tar, Skeen said they’ll move to the neighborhood between Spur 101 and Old Rockmart Road to start working on Jack, Nelson and Woodruff streets.