A fast-moving line of thunderstorms swept through south Baldwin County on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 16, 2014, knocking out electricity to thousands of homes and businesses and prompting a brief flood advisory for parts of the region.
The National Weather Service office in Mobile tracked the storm cell as it moved across the lower part of the county, with forecasters noting frequent lightning strikes and torrential rainfall between roughly 2 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. A photo shared by the weather service on social media captured the lightning-heavy system as it rolled over the area.
Baldwin County Electric Membership Corporation reported that more than 5,200 customers had lost power by mid-afternoon, spread across roughly two dozen service areas stretching from Weeks Bay to Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. A cooperative spokeswoman said crews were dispatched to nearly every affected area within the hour, and by later that afternoon more than 3,000 customers already had electricity restored.
Riviera Utilities, which serves customers in and around Foley, reported a smaller but still significant outage, with about 1,000 customers losing service during the height of the storm. A utility spokesman said the vast majority of those customers, more than 900, had power back within a couple of hours. By early evening, only a few dozen customers remained without electricity, concentrated along U.S. 98 near Foley and in an area south of Fairhope.
Baldwin County’s emergency management director said the storms produced only minor flooding along some county roads and portions of Highway 98 on the south end of the county, describing the water as a nuisance rather than a serious hazard. He also confirmed that lightning strikes were reported in at least two locations during the storm. One strike produced a smoke smell inside a house, while another ignited a small storage shed. Local fire crews were able to extinguish that fire quickly, and no injuries were reported from either incident.
As the storm system continued to move through the region, the National Weather Service issued a small stream flood advisory covering western Baldwin County and central Mobile County, which remained in effect into the early evening. Forecasters cautioned drivers to watch for standing water on low-lying roads even after the heaviest rain had passed.
Utility crews in both service areas continued restoration work into the evening, and officials with both Baldwin EMC and Riviera Utilities said customers could track outages through each provider’s online outage maps. The rapid response from both utilities meant that the vast majority of affected homes and businesses had power restored well before nightfall, even as scattered pockets of outages persisted overnight in a few pockets of the county.