A vehicle passes through a puddle in the 2000 block of Martin Luther King Drive this morning.(Melanie Duncan Thortis The Vicksburg Post)

[2/5/04]Power was out in at least two areas of Vicksburg and Warren County this morning after an overnight thunderstorm and high winds moved through.

One of the outages, along Washington Street between the Mississippi River bridges and Belmont Street, was blamed on a transformer knocked out when a car hit a utility poll.

Rain and thunderstorms began moving into the area between 9 and 10 p.m. Wednesday and increased in strength during the night. The system was expected to remain in the area throughout today and clear out tonight. This morning, emergency management officials reported trees down in widely separated parts of Warren County, electrical outages and at least one wreck that could have been blamed on the weather.

Vicksburg police said a Honda SUV driven by Julia Stevenson, 23, 2826 Highway 139, Monroe, La., went off the hill to the west of Washington Street near the Isle of Capri about 4:30 a.m. today. Stevenson, who was headed south, apparently lost control of her vehicle and went off the side of the hill, hit a utility pole and came to rest in River Front Park, police said.

A spokesman for River Region Medical Center said Stevenson was in the emergency room about mid-morning.

Cheryl Comans, customer service representative for Entergy, said the vehicle knocked out power from there along Washington Street to Belmont Street, affecting about 1,400 customers. Power had been restored to all but about 400 by 8:30, she said.

She also said a tree fell on U.S. 61 North where the Entergy transmission line that feeds power from the North Vicksburg Substation to Rolling Fork, interrupting power transmission to two electric power associations that serve north Warren County. By midmorning, most of the service had been restored, but work was still in progress to get the substation at Redwood back in service.

A tree down near U.S. 61 North and Beechwood Road also knocked out power, Comans said, but added she did not have a count on the customers affected.

Bubba Keever of Twin County Electric Power Association said the outage on the Entergy transmission line cut power to about 1,400 of the association’s customers in the Eagle Lake Community in Warren County and near Fitler in Issaquena County. All were back in service by shortly after 8.

Yazoo Valley Electric Power Association serves northeast Warren County and reported outages in that area. Power was restored by shortly after 9 a.m.

L.W. Callaway, director of the Warren County Emergency Management Office, said his office received reports of five trees down in scattered parts of the county but said there appeared to be no pattern that could be blamed on anything other than the heavy rain saturating the soil.

The storm, which began Wednesday night, resulted in 1.45 inches of rainfall at the Vicksburg Water Treatment Plant on Haining Drive until about 7 a.m. today. At the Vicksburg Tallulah Regional Airport at Mound, the weather reporting system indicated nearly 2.25 inches through about midmorning.

Weather forecasts for the Vicksburg area called for a tornado watch until about noon and continued rain and scattered thunderstorms through the day and into tonight. The rain is predicted to begin clearing tonight and the skies Friday are supposed to be still cloudy. Rain is not predicted for Friday.