Storm cuts power, delays harvest

About 2,000 customers in Cape Girardeau and Scott counties were without electricity for a few hours.

By MARK BLISS

Southeast Missourian

A lightning strike caused a power outage Friday morning while steady rain frustrated farmers trying to harvest their crops.

Lightning from a thunderstorm that swept through the area hit a 34,000-volt AmerenUE transmission line, cutting power to an Oran, Mo., area substation.

The power went out at about 10:30 a.m. and was restored to all of the customers by about 1 p.m., said Dan Yarbrough, electrical construction supervisor for AmerenUE.

The outage affected 2,000 to 2,100 customers in the Delta, Chaffee and Dutchtown areas of southern Cape Girardeau County and northern Scott County, he said.

The Delta School District dismissed students at noon because the power outage prevented the cooking of lunches at the high school, officials said.

The outage was more widespread than normally would have been the case because all of the power in those areas was being run through the Oran area substation while work continued to upgrade a power line running from Cape Girardeau to Dutchtown, Yarbrough said.

The National Weather Service and local emergency preparedness officials reported no flash flooding.

October has been wetter than usual, said Jonathan Garner, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky.

Rainfall in Cape Girardeau averages 3.17 inches in October. So far this month, the area has received more than 3.85 inches of rain, Garner said, citing precipitation amounts recorded at the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport.

But downtown Cape Girardeau registered 5.4 inches of rain for the month as of 8 a.m. Friday, according to a weather gauge.

Cape Girardeau received as much as 1.5 inches of rain over a 24-hour period extending into Friday, Garner said.

The wet weather was expected to have moved out of the area by late Friday night.

Dry weather and warming temperatures are expected this weekend with highs Sunday in the upper 60s. The high temperature is forecast to reach the low 70s on Monday.

But rain is expected to return as early as Tuesday. Another cold front is expected to move through the area, bringing a drop in temperatures. The high by midweek is expected to be in the 50s.

"It is a transitional period right now during the fall. It's not uncommon for this to happen," Garner said.

Rain over the past few weeks has hampered the harvest of crops in Southeast Missouri.

"It definitely has slowed everything down," said David Reinbott, University of Missouri Extension agriculture business specialist at Benton, Mo.

"A lot of soybeans and cotton still need to be harvested," he said. Some farmers are still waiting to plant winter wheat.

"Unless the weather really changes, we probably will have crops in the field up through Thanksgiving," Reinbott said.

The longer the crops sit in the fields, the greater the risk that farmers will end up with lower yields, he said.

A dry spell this weekend won't be enough to get farmers back in the fields, Reinbott said.

"We probably need about three weeks of no rain."

Children in the Cape Girardeau and Jackson areas had a scheduled holiday from school. For parents like Tina Wright of Cape Girardeau, the wet weather meant a day of finding other ways to entertain her 15-year-old daughter, 9-year-old son and 5-year-old granddaughter.

She said she kept the younger children busy. "They played ball in the house. They colored. They drew," she said.

Wright said she hopes today is dry. "If it doesn't get better," she said, "we might have to take a trip to the mall."

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123