Weather service: More snow possible for Thursday

Jan. 4—After two storm systems brought high winds, heavy rains and up to 5 inches of snow to the area during the weekend, the National Weather Service in Huntsville said residents could get additional snow, although not as much, on Thursday.

Today, the National Weather Service and Limestone County Emergency Management Agency officials will be assessing parts of northern Limestone County to determine if damage sustained in Saturday's storm was from a tornado.

EMA officer Daphne Ellison said a house and barn received significant damage and several trees were downed in the Lester and Salem communities about 4:30 p.m. Saturday.

"The National Weather Service will be here Tuesday to decide if it was a tornado or straight-line winds that caused the damage," she said. "Either way, we were lucky nobody was injured and we didn't have more damage than we did."

The National Weather Service in Huntsville said a tornado that touched down near Triana on Saturday evening and damaged dozens of homes started in Limestone County. The NWS recorded maximum winds of 80 mph in the twister. Another tornado with 85 mph winds was confirmed near Hazel Green.

Nearly all of the nearly 4,000 area households that had electrical power knocked out because of the weekend storms have their power back on and a few roads that were closed have reopened even though low temperatures continue to hover below freezing.

About 3,500 Athens Utilities customers were without power early Monday. By 5 p.m., AU Electric Department Manager Blair Davis said crews had switched as many customers as possible to other power sources and crews were hooking up a mobile transformer to help serve about 1,900 without power in the Greenbrier area.

The 288 Decatur Utilities customers in Southwest Decatur who woke up without power Monday had it restored by noon, DU spokesman Joe Holmes said.

About 2,000 Joe Wheeler Electric Membership Corp. customers were without power early Monday morning, but by 5 p.m. only nine households were without power. The utility serves rural areas of Lawrence and Morgan counties.

The National Weather Service is forecasting freezing temperatures for the area tonight with a combination of rain and snow moving in on Thursday.

"It won't be anything like what we just saw," said meteorologist Shelly Amin. "The system will move through northern Alabama Thursday afternoon and evening and be gone by Thursday night."

Amin said portions of Limestone County, mainly northeast of Athens, got about 5 inches of snow Sunday night and Lacey's Spring in northeastern Morgan County reported 4.8 inches of snow.

Today's high could reach 50, Amin said, with the lows dipping into the upper teens or lower 20s.

Brandy Davis, Morgan County Emergency Management Agency director, said the county was spared any serious damage from downed trees and icy roads Saturday and Sunday.

She said Morgan County spent "a very short time" under a tornado warning on Saturday evening but sirens didn't sound.

"The National Weather Service puts out a weather polygon (the path of the storm system) where the warning is in effect — the area that could be impacted — and the actual storm sirens were not in the polygon," Davis said.

She added a TVA storm siren was in the system's path but the TVA system has no way of sounding a single siren. "All 19 of their sirens would have to be sounded, instead of just the one in the polygon, so it wasn't. Eighteen would have gone off for no reason. It's something we are going to look into."

Ellison said the county will conduct a three-minute siren test at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday. She said the action is unrelated to the weekend storms.

"We're moving our siren tests to the first Wednesday of each month," she said. "We don't want the public to be alarmed."

Officials in Morgan, Limestone and Lawrence counties urged motorists to be cautious of possible refreezing and black ice conditions until temperatures warm.

"There's always that possibility of water along the roadways, especially in turn lanes, to refreeze overnight," said Seth Burkett, the Alabama Department of Transportation's Northern Division spokesman.

He said portions of U.S. 231 in the Morgan City community were closed Monday morning because of icy conditions. ALDOT put potassium acetate on the bridges and salt on the roadways before the roads were deemed passable.

Lawrence County Engineer Winston Sitton said his crews worked on downed trees throughout the county over the weekend. "We were ready for a lot worse than what we got," he said. "We were fortunate."

— mike.wetzel@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2442. Twitter @DD_Wetzel.