News Features
Helene Brings Power Outages, Improved Flood Conditions
Hurricane Helene brought power outages to the area on Thursday evening and into Friday morning. Thousands of Lake County homes and businesses were impacted by the storm’s passing, though most customers had seen their power restored sometime on Friday.
While the storm is gaining national news for the amount of rain it dropped on parts of the southeastern United States, its brush by North Lake County resulted in less than an inch of rain in most gauges. In addition, its passing and northerly winds pulled water through the St. Johns River at a rate that actually reduced the Astor community's flooding, with the river at Astor plummeting almost a foot to just over two feet, which denotes a drop from moderate flood stage into minor flood stage. Should the river drop below two feet in the coming days, it will be entirely out of flood stage.
While Astor might be one of the few communities in Florida positively impacted by the storm, there were power outages in the Astor and Astor Park areas, with an estimated 900 Clay Electric customers impacted.
Further south, Clay also had outages in the Shockley area of Altoona where an estimated 200 customers in the Shockley Hills and Shockley Heights communities, and SECO Energy reported outages both in Altoona and west of Umatilla, with an estimated 2,000 customers impacted by those outages.
Duke Energy, which covers a broad spectrum of Lake County, reported several thousand homes with outages overnight Thursday. Included in that group were sections of Umatilla, Grand Island, Eustis, Mount Dora, and Tavares.
Private crews working the Duke outages in Umatilla on Friday indicated they intended to wrap up the local outages later that day before heading north toward areas more severely impacted.
“Crews never stopped working overnight,” said Curtis Wynn, SECO Energy Chief Executive Officer. “They worked through rain and wind gusts making significant progress.”
Lake County Schools closed on Thursday and reopened Friday, though some campuses, Like the Altoona School, remained closed due to power not yet being restored. County shelters remained open until Sunday morning to support anyone with lingering needs. Additionally, sandbag locations were closed on Sunday. Lake Sumter State College also closed on Thursday, and resumed normal operations on Friday.
County parks were closed on Thursday in preparation for the storm, but reopened on Friday. Recreational areas in the Ocala National Forest were closed for the weather, reopening on Saturday. Closed recreation areas included Alexander Springs, Clearwater Lake, Juniper Springs, Silver Glen Springs Recreation Area, and Wildcat Lake.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office deployed a series of units to support storm relief efforts. Among the team heading north to Lafayette County, where among other services LCSO representatives provided tree removal services.
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