No Major Damage, But Some Outages As Zeta Moves Over Tuscaloosa

TUSCALOOSA, AL. — Hurricane Zeta saw little to no major damage reported in the Tuscaloosa Patch coverage area, despite high winds and heavy rain moving over west Alabama and the rest of the state Wednesday night into Thursday morning.

After issuing a Tropical Storm Warning and Flash Flood Watch for Tuscaloosa County on Wednesday, both advisories were allowed to expire ahead of Thursday morning. Additionally, both the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office, Tuscaloosa Police Department and Tuscaloosa Fire Rescue each confirmed to Patch that they did not receive any local damage reports as a result of the storm.

Click here to subscribe to our daily email newsletters and breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox and mobile devices for free. You can also support local journalism by donating as little as $5 a month to become a supporting member or by downloading our free Patch mobile app

Perhaps the biggest impact brought by the fast-moving storm was in the loss of power for more than 1,000 in Tuscaloosa County as of 7:45 a.m. Thursday morning, with Alabama Power reporting outages for 1.2% of its 107,000 customers in county. Statewide, the utility said 326,849 of its 2.1 million customers were facing outages as of the publication of this story due to Hurricane Zeta.

In terms of proximity to Tuscaloosa County, Bibb County to the south continues to see widespread outages, with Alabama Power reporting 72% of the county's 11,546 customers without power as of 8 a.m. Thursday.

While schools across the state also adjusted plans for start times on Thursday, both the Tuscaloosa County School System and Tuscaloosa City Schools monitored the situation and went about the day as planned.

According to the NOAA Storm Prediction Center's damage reports, the nearest major incident where damage was confirmed came just across the state line in Mississippi about an hour and a half west of Tuscaloosa, where a suspected tornado downed trees and power lines on Magnolia Drive in Noxubee County.

NOAA reported that as of Thursday morning, no damage reports had been filed for Tuscaloosa County or in west Alabama.

As Zeta moved up through Alabama along the western side of the state, the National Hurricane Center said sustained winds of 41 mph were reported in Evergreen about three hours south of Tuscaloosa, with a wind gust of 68 mph.

Since making landfall, at least two people in Louisiana and Georgia have had their deaths attributed to Zeta.

To report storm damage in your area, email us at ryan.phillips@patch.com.

Follow Patch here for updates or on Facebook and Twitter.