Residents throughout Habersham County awakened to power outages and storm damage Sunday morning. The storm began to blow through the county at around 6 a.m. and lasted about an hour.
Thousands of power outages were caused by downed trees and power lines around the county.
At 7 a.m. Sunday, Habersham EMC and Georgia Power reported almost 4,000 customers without power, with more outages reported as people began to wake up.
WATCH Habersham hit by apparent downburst
Clarkesville and Cornelia were the hardest hit by power outages, but the wind damage was spread across the county. Toppled trees blocked roads in Mt. Airy and Demorest.
Numerous fallen trees caused significant damage along Rocky Branch Road and Gabrels Drive in Clarkesville. Several large trees blocked the intersection and fell onto the power lines.
One resident on Gabrels Drive said that she could hear the wind whistling around her house at around 6 a.m. and started hearing trees break and fall all around. “It was quite scary,” she said. Her house wasn’t damaged, but a couple of trees from her neighbor’s house fell across the fence in her backyard.
That intersection will be closed throughout the day so crews can clean up the debris and replace a power pole.
A local business in Clarkesville was also hit hard. Cap’N Auto Service on Ellison Street had part of its roof blown off that landed on two vehicles in the parking lot. Roofing debris was scattered across the parking lot and across the street.
