Storms knock out power to many across Stephens County; overall, damage was minor
By Carla McKeown/Breckenridge Texan
Breckenridge and Stephens County experienced some minor damage — with a few more serious incidents — in the storms that moved through Texas, from the northwest to the east-southeast, Sunday evening, June 8.
A lineman uses a chainsaw to clear tree limbs away from a downed powerline on State Highway 67, while his co-worker pulls up the powerline to reconnect it to the new pole their crew had just installed. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)
When daylight dawned Monday morning, local residents could see the damage — mostly broken tree branches, streets strewn with leaves stripped from the trees and a few hundred households without power. In some areas of the county, residents experienced uprooted trees and damage to barns and other outbuildings. For example, on State Highway 67, several powerlines and poles were downed in the storm Sunday night. The homes affected by that damage had electricity before 4 p.m. Monday.
By 5 p.m. Monday, power company work crews had restored electric service to most of the local homes, with Oncor reporting only 12 customers still affected by the outages.
The original forecast had warned of winds up to 100 miles per hour with baseball-sized hail and tornadoes. The National Weather Service reports that at the Stephens County Airport, the highest wind gusts were 45 mph with most of the gusts in the 15 to 30 mph range during the worst of the storm. There was also some small hail in the area.
Other parts of the state didn’t fare as well. For example, Big Spring experienced some major damage with large hail around 8 p.m. Sunday. Today, the Big Spring mayor and the Howard County Judge announced emergency disaster declarations for that area. Mineral Wells and Weatherford also had some damage from the storms.
Breckenridge City Manager Cynthia Northrop reported on Facebook this morning that local first responders were out assessing, communicating and addressing various downed power lines, high water, and tree limbs/debris, after the main line of storms passed. They continued to monitor the situation until storms were over in the early morning hours of Monday.
Local residents can sign up to receive emergency alerts, including weather alerts, via cell phone, landlines (home phone), email or TDD/TTY. To get the alerts, you’ll need to visit the City of Breckenridge’s website and click on the links to HyperReach or “emergency alerts,” or click here to go straight to the HyperReach signup page. You will need to provide your name, address and phone number or email address.
Thunderstorms remain in the forecast for the rest of the week, beginning with a 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms Monday night and early Tuesday morning, continuing with a 70 percent chance or rain or storms on Wednesday and a 60 percent chance on Thursday. By Friday, the chances of rain drop to 20 percent, and the forecast calls for a sunny weekend.
Cutline, top photo: Utility workers from Parish Utilities work to replace a downed utility pole on State Highway 67 about 2 miles north of U.S. Highway 180 East on Monday morning. Several homes in the area were without power from about 9:30 p.m. Sunday night to 3:40 pm Monday afternoon, when power was restored. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)
