A round of strong afternoon storms rolled through the Mobile area on a Tuesday in mid-September, cutting electricity to thousands of homes and businesses as heavy rain, gusty winds and frequent lightning moved across the region.
An Alabama Power spokeswoman said the heaviest concentration of outages struck west Mobile, where approximately 2,000 households lost service as the storm cells pushed through. Crews with the utility were monitoring the situation closely but held off sending trucks into some neighborhoods until lightning and high winds had cleared the area, citing safety concerns for line workers.
Downtown Mobile was not spared either. Another 1,600 customers in the downtown area went dark during the height of the storm, and roughly 1,000 additional customers on Dauphin Island also lost power as the weather system moved through the coastal areas of the county.
Photos and video shared by residents and weather watchers showed flooded roadways in parts of west Mobile, with standing water backing up along Airport Boulevard and slowing afternoon traffic to a crawl. The National Weather Service office in Mobile also noted forecasters had spotted the storm cells approaching the west side of the city ahead of the worst of the rain and wind.
Alabama Power officials said restoration crews planned to work into the evening once conditions were safe, with the timeline for full restoration depending on how quickly additional storm cells cleared the area. The utility asked customers to report outages through its normal channels so crews could prioritize work by neighborhood.
The outages in Mobile County came on the heels of a broader stretch of unsettled weather that also knocked out power for thousands of customers across the bay in Baldwin County that same day, as the same storm system pushed eastward along the Gulf Coast. Utility crews on both sides of Mobile Bay found themselves stretched thin responding to scattered outages tied to downed lines and storm debris.
Local officials reminded residents to steer clear of any downed power lines and to treat all lines as energized until crews confirm otherwise. Motorists were also urged to use caution on flooded roadways, particularly along low-lying stretches of west Mobile where standing water had pooled during the height of the storm.
By early evening, Alabama Power crews were fanning out across the affected neighborhoods to begin assessing damage and restoring service, though officials cautioned that some pockets of the county could remain without power overnight depending on the extent of equipment damage found once crews could safely access the lines.