Power officials quick to respond following Monday's outages

Several Starkville customers were without power Monday evening as a storm rolled through Oktibbeha County.

Terry Kemp of Starkville Utilities said lightning was the biggest factor in power losses from the weather.

Kemp said lightning hit two transformers Monday. The first was down on South Montgomery Street and caused minimal damager. However, lightning later hit a junction near Bell Building Supply on East Lampkin Street, causing a significant outage leaving most of the street in the dark.

Kemp said a tree also fell down from storm winds onto power lines, a causing customers near Forest Hills Drive and Greensboro Street to lose power.

Overall, about 1,300 people were affected by the power outages.

Outside of the city, Jon Turner of 4-County Electric said customers in the county were "minimally affected" by the weather on Monday.

He said while there had been 13 outages that day affecting roughly 92 people, those were not the result of any weatherrelated incidents.

Both Turner and Kemp said they had been watching the weather as it developed throughout the day and had personnel on-call in case of an emergency.

Kemp said he initially believed Monday's storm was going to miss Starkville and continue north. When that proved untrue, he switched to monitoring for damage reports.

"We try real hard once we get an indication something's wrong to resolve it," Kemp said.

Turner said watching the weather was just something people in his industry did and Monday's fast-moving storm would not have changed 4-County's procedure.

"We watched the weather and try to be prepared," Turner said. "You get used to these pop-up storms in this business."

All 1,300 customers had their power restored by Starkville Utilities Monday night.