Ice, rain, heavy wind and power outages

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, Tennessee(WDEF) – Friday morning was anything but pleasant for people who were impacted by the winter weather that swept through the Tennessee Valley.

By 2 A.M., EPB crews were dispatched to various areas along Lookout Mountain after the smart grid began detecting power outages. EPB Spokesperson John Pless said those outages began to peak by 3 A.M.

"At that time we had up to 500 customers who lost power on Lookout Mountain. We had about 100 customers who lost power on the back side of Signal Mountain going toward Sequatchie County. We had close to 100 customers who had power outages on the Mowbray Mountain area," Pless said.

The outages were the result of heavy ice on the power lines as well as excessive winds that toppled trees onto power lines.

"Even though temperatures rose above freezing, it kept freezing the trees to the point where with the winds knocked down many trees. Dispatchers were reporting that we had at least 20 or more trees down," said Lookout Mountain Police Chief Randall Bowden.

The 200 block of Richardson Street was one of the more harder hit areas. Anyone living on that street had to deal with falling trees, downed power lines, falling ice and power outages.

Amsley Moses is one of those Richardson Street residents.

"I’ve seen ice storms and things like that but I’ve never seen this much wind and damage of blowing trees down," Moses said.

Miles away at Chattanooga Airport, some travelers were lucky to have a flight to board, but others were not. Several flights to Washington and Charlotte were cancelled because of the wintry weather. Other travelers had to deal with delays.

"Leaving Toronto yesterday, there was some delays and that caused me to get in late to Atlanta so then my baggage didn’t get onto a flight to Chattanooga," said Paul Beatty.

Now more wintry weather is on the way.