Lonnie Friar surveys the damage to his home at 3360 Redbone Road this morning following a thunderstorm that swept through Warren County causing power outages and downed trees Thursday night.(Melanie Duncan Thortis The Vicksburg Post)

[7/18/03]Powerful thunderstorms Thursday night ripped an awning from above a mobile home, downed trees and caused power outages, but resulted in no injuries.

“It happened so fast there was no time to do anything,” said Lonnie Friar, whose awning above his mobile home at 3360 Redbone Road was ripped off by wind with gusts reported as high as 53 mph in parts of the area.

The storm started in Warren County about 6:30 p.m. Thursday, said L.W. Callaway III, executive director of the Warren County Emergency Management Office.

“I guess it was about 7 when we started to get trees down and power out,” he said.

Callaway said it appeared the storm did not follow the normal west- or southwest-to- east or -northeast paths. Rather, it moved from the northeast to the southwest with most of the damage concentrated in the southern part of Vicksburg and south Warren County and between Fisher Ferry Road and U.S. 61 South.

Friar’s home is east of U.S. 61.

“I was in the house when the wind came up,” he said. “I heard the awning rattling, and then it was gone.”

He said the storm was really weird in that it caused damage at his home, but did not appear to have touched his neighbor’s house just across the road.

Cheryl Comans, Entergy customer service manager for this area, said more than 3,300 customers lost power Thursday night.

“The first blow came about 7 o’clock and knocked out 3,075 customers. Then about 9:30 there was another blow, and we lost another 200 to 250,” she said.

Repair crews worked through the night, and about 840 customers remained without power at 8 this morning, Comans said. Getting those customers back in service will likely take until midnight, she said.

Comans said the main causes of the outages were wires slapping together, snapped poles, and trees and limbs falling on lines.

Callaway said his office had reports of about a dozen downed trees inside the city limits of Vicksburg and at least 20 or more in south Warren County.

Nikole Listemaa of the National Weather Service Office in Jackson said the storm was the after-effect of storms that blossomed in north Mississippi Thursday afternoon and confirmed the one that hit here moved, roughly, from north to south.

“It was just so hot, so moist and so unstable,” she said.

Listemaa said the office had no observations or estimates of the speed of the wind in Warren County, but did have one from the Vicksburg Tallulah Regional Airport in Mound. One gust was measured at 53 mph.

The rainfall in the area was variable with 0.04 inch measured at the Vicksburg Water Treatment Plant on the E.W. Haining Industrial Center and 0.65 inch measured at VTR.

There was also a report of marble-sized hail in the Jeff Davis Road area.

The National Weather Service was forecasting more showers today and tonight, but with lesser winds, and showers and thunderstorms on Saturday.