SPRING STORMS SOCK AREA

Stormy weather Tuesday splintered trees and telephone poles and tested Union Electric's computer system as UE workers scurried to remedy power outages affecting 3,000 customers at 30 locations in a 25-mile radius.

High winds knocked trees and tree limbs onto power lines throughout Cape Girardeau, wreaking temporary havoc with UE's feeder and distribution lines. The company was able to restore electricity in most places before noon. By 3:30 p.m., UE was dealing with just a handful of isolated cases.

Union Electric District Manager Doug Groesbeck pointed to an outage highlighted on his computer identifying more than 1,800 customers in a portion of the region.

"We went to that section first because of the high number of customers affected," Groesbeck said, adding that outages affecting just one or two customers are dealt with as quickly as possible.

The storm forced a higher percentage of single outages than UE has had in some time, Groesbeck said.

The Outage Analysis System has been a part of UE's operation for two years.

The system allows UE to identify what power feeders are being affected and how many customers are without power, Groesbeck said.

The information is fed into the system as calls identifying power outages come into to UE's main office on Broadway. Dispatchers, who work at UE's office on Minnesota, notify UE workers where to go to correct the problems.

Once the problem is corrected, the dispatcher notifies the UE office and the number of residents affected is erased from the screen.

"There is a significant amount of time saved in what we do now as opposed to what we did before the system was in place," Groesbeck said.

In a matter of several minutes, the outage affecting the 1,800 customers in the southwest portion of town was remedied.

"In this case it was a tree limb on a power line," Groesbeck said. "Sometimes the outage takes more time to correct."

TCI Cable Television Manager Roger Harms said the storm knocked out several power-supply stations in the south and middle part of town early Tuesday. However, power to most of those stations was restored by noon. The rest was restored by late afternoon.

This being the mean season, the time when tornadoes and hurricanes are most likely to occur, Groesbeck said UE is prepared for a high rate of power outages.

"The time between April and May is usually when we have tornado warnings and high winds," he said. "The spring and usually the fall period, from late August to September, are the peak months for power outages."

Dale Bechtold, forecaster for the National Weather Service, said such high winds were to shift to the southwest and west, and showers should end by today.

Weather this spring is much different than last year's mean season. There has been relatively little rainfall this spring with temperatures ranging as high as 82 to 86 between April 7 and 10. Monday's high of 86 was a record, beating the high of 84, April 10, 1977. In addition, Saturday's high of 85 broke the record set April 8, 1978.

"The dryness is what is particularly odd," Southeast Missouri State climatologist Al Robertson said. "April is usually the second wettest month of the year behind May, and yet we've only seen .07 of rainfall so far this month."

Last spring there was plenty of rain, as much as 1.08 inches on two occasions. But the highest temperatures dipped to the 54 to 66 range during the same period.

"There was much warmer air 30 miles south of St. Louis over the weekend," Bechtold said. "With jet stream activity, air masses can change dramatically this time of year."