THE WILD STORM OF 2012 - WV Officials Say Things 'Normal' By Weekend, 1.4 Mil Still Without Power In Mid-Alantic

(07/04/2012)

It will likely be the weekend before things return to normal in Calhoun and West Virginia, struck hard by a Friday windstorm. Weather experts called it a "derecho" (pronounced "deh-REY-cho"), a Spanish word meaning "straight" or "straight line." According the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a derecho is "a widespread, long-lived storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers and thundershowers." Wind guages locally recorded 70-80 mph winds, but Preston County reported 100 mph wind. It was an unusual weather happening. Electric and phone service, with gasoline deliveries will be normalizing by the weekend, according to state officials. The storm knocked out electric service to more than 668,000 homes and businesses. Tuesday afternoon, Appalachian Power was reporting 234,000 outages in Southern West Virginia. Mon Power and Potomac Edison in Northern West Virginia, the outage numbers were at 132,000 and most of those were for Mon Power. It appears the number of Calhoun customers without power is now below 2,000, although many report they do not have phone service. In the mid-Alantic states, 1.4 million households and businesses still did not have power.

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