Monday night storm causes loss of power for many parish residents

St. Tammany News

A lightening storm rumbled through St. Tammany Monday evening, zapping power to nearly 10,000 area residents as 40 mph winds toppled tree limbs and thunderclouds dumped 1 to 2 inches of rain throughout the parish.

"It was a very intense lightening storm," Tim Destri, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Slidell, said. "People were probably jarred awake last night."

The storm averaged 1,000 lightening strikes an hour, he said, an above average rate for a late winter/early summer storm.

No injuries were reported.

As of Tuesday morning, Washington-St. Tammany Electric reported 8,000 homeowners who lost power.

All but a sliver of those homes were back on line by Tuesday morning, Kurt Hellmann, manager of government relations, said.

Cleco reported 1,160 customers who lost power between 9:30 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. By daybreak, power to those homes was restored, said Scott Biggers, manager of customer and community services.

The largest Cleco outage occurred on U.S. Highway 190 approaching Covington, where a down tree damaged power lines that halted power for 160 customers.

In Covington and Mandeville, about 750 customers lost power, with 510 in Slidell and Pearl River areas, Biggers said.

The storm stretched from Hattiesburg, Miss., in the north, south through St. Tammany, continuing through New Orleans and south to the Gulf of Mexico coastline, Destri said.

It erupted when a warm, moist air front from the south clashed with a cold front from the west, Destri said.