Volunteer Energy Cooperative crews were quick to respond when storms Thursday afternoon knocked out the power to over 50% of VEC customers in Cumberland County. The mass outage occurred after lightning hit a TVA feeder line. At 1:26pm VEC reported over 3,000 without power in Cumberland County and by 1:45pm that number had grown to over 19,000. There were 172 outages in Bledsoe County. At 2:18pm electricity had been restored to all but three dozen in Cumberland County and 1 in Polk County.
Around 5:30pm a severe storm that spawned a tornado warning knocked out power to over 100 in Cumberland County.
We have a chance for severe storms through Memorial Day Weekend.