Severe weather sweeps through region

A series of storms that began early Tuesday morning continued moving through Southeast Missouri, Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky late into Tuesday night.

Along their path the storms caused several flood and tornado watches and warnings, and one early storm temporarily cut off power to AmerenUE electric utility customers in Cape Girardeau.

Flash flood and tornado watches were in effect for most of the area until midnight today. A flash flood warning for most of Southeast Missouri was in effect until 1:30 a.m.

A tornado warning was issued by the National Weather Service office in Paducah, Ky., for Cape Girardeau County just before 7 p.m., but it expired by 7:30 p.m., only to be followed by a flash flood warning for most of the Southeast Missouri area.

The tornado warning was based on radar indications of a strong storm capable of producing a tornado, not any tornado or funnel cloud sighting.

At one point a tornado warning was also in effect for Stoddard and Scott counties, but it quickly expired.

Richard Knaup with the Cape Girardeau County Emergency Operations Center reported pea- to marble-sized hail and some localized flooding in the northern part of the county.

A storm that moved through the area in the early morning hours disrupted electric service to 1,890 AmerenUE customers.

At 4:07 a.m. Tuesday, a lightning strike caused a power line to go down just west of Interstate 55 near the William Street interchange, said Ameren spokesman Mike Cleary.

The outage left 1,758 customers without power for two hours and 132 customers without power for four hours, with no service during the morning hours when many are preparing for work. The outages occurred in the western section of the city.

By midafternoon, the National Weather Service office in Paducah had issued flash flood and tornado watches for Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois.

Weather service meteorologist Christine Wielgos called the conditions "a particularly dangerous situation."

msanders@semissourian.com

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