STORMS DISRUPT POWER IN AREA

More than 2,000 Union Electric customers in Cape Girardeau County were without power Monday night after a storm packing intense winds swept the region.

UE district manager Doug Groesbeck said power was restored to 1,670 customers between 6:45 and 9:10 p.m., but 335 customers were still in the dark at 9:10.

Groesbeck said most of the power outages were caused by downed power lines and a few instances of lightning-related problems. He said the hardest hit areas were north Cape Girardeau.

Groesbeck said he had all of UE's repairmen working to restore power to residents at Greenbrier in Stoddard County, which had 130 customers without power; 73 residents in north Cape Girardeau and 50 customers in the 2000 block of Big Bend Road.

After that, workers were to begin restoring power to individual customers, a process that was expected to take most of the night.

Groesbeck said he expected to have power restored to all customers by this morning.

Kim Bentley said she saw a utility pole begin a slow topple toward her neighbor's house at 1625 Bloomfield Road at about 7 p.m. Despite the pole being supported only by its connecting power lines, neither Bentley nor her neighbors lost power.

Bentley said the pole didn't make a noise as it either broke at the base or became dislodged. It started falling directly over her neighbor's driveway, then stopped.

Bentley said she was frightened at first but calmed down by the time she made it to the phone to call 911.

UE workers arrived about an hour later and began working to right the pole.

The Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department reported trees down at scattered places across the county, but no roads blocked or property damaged. The city of Jackson reported some power outages.

The weather forced cancellation of baseball games at Capaha Field and moved a tent revival at Grace United Methodist Church indoors.

Nick Palisch of Perryville said winds in Perry County reached speeds of 63 mph. Although Perryville had no rain, Palisch saw golf-ball-sized hail in Biehle and limbs down, "but nothing major." He said Frohna and Altenburg reported hail and high winds as well.

In Bollinger County a storm knocked power out in Marble Hill for 45 minutes, downed trees and knocked antennas off houses in Zalma and Arab, said a dispatcher with the sheriff's department at Marble Hill.

The wind knocked out power in Cairo, Ill., at 7:49 p.m., and it stayed off for at least an hour and a half. Police Chief Jim Wright said downed tree limbs blocked some side streets and may have damaged some houses.

Greg Lamberty, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky., said winds reached 40 mph at the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport.

Lamberty said there were no confirmed reports of tornadoes touching down in the area, and nickel-sized hail was reported in several parts of Cape Girardeau County.