Live storm updates: More than 80K electric customers still without power in Tallahassee area

Tallahassee is continuing to try to get back on its feet following widespread destruction from Friday’s storms, which could go down in history as the city’s worst tornado outbreak ever.

Wind gusts as high as 100 mph and as many as three different tornadoes led to untold human suffering across the city, with countless trees, power poles and lines down and numerous homes and businesses damaged or destroyed. A number of neighborhood roads, not to mention driveways, remained buried in debris, making travel difficult if not impossible.

Tragically, a woman also lost her life when a tree crashed into her home.

As of Saturday morning, more than 80,000 electric customers in Tallahassee and surrounding communities were still without power. Scores of outside line workers have descended on the area to help with power restoration.

Here’s the latest:

City electric crews and more than 200 mutual aid personnel from 25 utilities around the state and nation are working to bring power back to Florida’s capital city.

“City and mutual aid crews worked overnight, and reinforcements began work at 6 a.m,” the city wrote in an early morning update. “Electric crews have restored service to 22,202 customers, and solid waste crews have resumed normal operations this morning.”

City administrators say they are aiming 75% restoration of customers by 8 p.m. today, May 11 and 90% by 8 p.m. Sunday, May 12.

After energizing the vast majority of residences and businesses, things can slow down once crews dig into individual neighborhoods that suffered major tree, power pole and line damage. Things can get even more complicated when addressing individual homes and businesses where trees damaged their power grid infrastructure.

Check out our power outage tracker here to see who’s out of power in the state.

More than 80,000 electric customers in Leon and nearby counties were still in the dark Saturday morning, a day after high winds and apparent tornadoes ripped through the area.

The city of Tallahassee, which has been updating customers about its restoration efforts via text, said Friday night that circuits serving downtown state offices, Florida A&M University, the Civic Center and FSU’s Mag Lab had been repaired.

“City and mutual aid crews will continue working through the night to make repairs as total customers restored approaches 10,000,” the city said. “All substations are now energized, and additional mutual aid crews will arrive (Saturday).”

Around 7:30 a.m. Saturday, the city’s outage map showed 525 outage orders affecting 64,762 customers. The outages were located throughout the city.

As the work continued, residents took to Facebook inquiring about their powerless neighborhoods.

“There’s no expected restoration time, but crews will be working around the clock until power is restored for all,” a city official wrote on one thread. “Power will be restored in order of largest to smallest outages, but prepare to be without power through the weekend. We appreciate your patience during restoration.”

Mayor John Dailey said in a video update on social media Friday evening that the storm was one of the worst to hit Tallahassee in the past decade, with wind gusts between 80 and 100 mph and as many as three tornadoes. But with extensive damage, Dailey said it will take some time to restore power.

“I’m asking for your patience,” Dailey said. “We are gonna get through this together.”

Talquin Electric, which serves Gadsden, Leon, Liberty and Wakulla counties, reported Saturday morning outages affecting 10,595 customers. Areas with the most outages included Chaires, Woodville and Lake Talquin.

The Tri-County Electric Cooperative in Madison said nearly 8,000 meters had no power after the storm cleared the area Friday. By Friday night, power had been restored to all but 2,480 meters. TCEC said there were still 1,154 meters out in Madison County, 896 in Jefferson County and 430 in Taylor County.

TCEC said its employees and more than 80 mutual aid workers would work Friday night while “it is safe to do so” and would resume repairs at sunrise Saturday.

“Our majority system restoration time of Saturday at 9:00 PM remains the same but we are working to have most restored much earlier,” said Kaitlynn Culpepper, a TCEC spokeswoman.

The city of Tallahassee said early Friday evening that mutual aid crews from Ocala, Havana, Dothan, Alabama, and Thomasville and Cairo, Georgia, were on site and making repairs. Crews from Orlando, Jacksonville and Lakeland were expected to roll in “any minute,” the city said.

Tallahassee electric customers can report outages and get updates on the city’s restoration efforts by visiting www.talgov.com/you/outage. Outages can also be reported by calling 850-891-4968.

Nature truly revealed its best and worst side on Friday.

Tallahasseeans awoke to panic as tornado warnings blared. Scenes of widespread destruction dominated social media news feeds throughout the day.

As night fell, horror gave way to awe as resident after resident shared their photos of the Northern Lights above Florida’s Capital city in the deep South.

Facebook was a stream of pink and purple with streaks in the night sky as residents went outside – often from powerless homes – to capture a clear view of an already rare phenomena that is never seen in Tallahassee.

If you missed it, there may be another chance to see it tonight. Click on the full story for details.

Survey crews from the National Weather Service will fan out today across Tallahassee to confirm three radar-indicated tornadoes that left heavy damage to the city and its electric grid Friday.

Wright Dobbs, meteorologist with the Weather Service in Tallahassee, said three different radar-indicated tornadoes hit the city as a powerful squall line pushed through around sunrise. Debris signatures from all three storms were seen on radar, prompting a succession of tornado warnings.

“It’s usually a sign there was a tornado on the ground,” Dobbs said. “Not always, but in most cases it is. So … we had three radar-confirmed tornadoes. We’ll still need to survey to ultimately confirm those survey results determined this afternoon.”

Dobbs said one of the unconfirmed tornadoes went up north of Lake Talquin and south of Interstate 10, hitting the campuses of Florida State and Florida A&M universities. A second possible twister may have started over Lake Talquin, moving south of Highway 20, across Capital Circle and into southern parts of Tallahassee.

“The second one that went through southern parts of town also got kind of close to the other one on radar,” Dobbs said. 

A third possible tornado, which also may have formed over Lake Talquin, moved over the Apalachicola National Forest, with the debris signature stopping before Crawfordville Highway.

Dobbs said the Weather Service issued severe thunderstorm warnings for gusts between 60 and 70 mph but that isolated areas may have seen gusts between 80-100 mph.

“One thing that could make (surveys) a little bit more challenging is that there were the tornadoes, but we also saw many areas of straight-line winds with the squall line that moved through. Squall lines can produce damage similar to a tornado and that’s why we’re going to be surveying these areas to see what it ultimately was.”

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.