Storms leave path of damage across Tennessee

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For the second time in six years, the Meece family spent the night in a hotel after severe weather toppled a tree onto their home, upending their lives Wednesday.

Darrell Meece and his family took shelter in the center of their home when they heard the wind start to pick up. The chaos was short-lived -- he guessed the storm swept through in only 15 minutes -- but when everything died down, they realized a tree had fallen onto their home, punching a hole through their kitchen.

No one in the home was injured, but Meece said he's still trying to get life in order from the last time a tree crushed his home in 2011.

During those deadly storms, a tree crashed into the room of his 7-year-old son, Holden, dropping a thick branch onto the boy's race car-shaped bed.

"I think we're about done here," he said Wednesday, while staring at his waterlogged kitchen in disarray with the branch poking through the ceiling. "The old bounce-back spirit bounced out of here."

The Meece home lies at the center of a short line of destruction wrought by Wednesday's storm across a couple of city blocks of the North Shore area. From Westwood Avenue to Englewood Avenue, severe winds uprooted trees, which fell onto homes, power lines and cars.

"It was like a hurricane almost," said TJ Maurer, a neighbor who lives on Westwood Avenue. "I knew it was going to be short and quick, but I didn't know it was going to be that intense."

The storm was part of a system that carved a path across the U.S. on Wednesday, killing at least three people and injuring dozens more. National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center meteorologist Patrick Marsh said crews are still determining how many twisters touched down across the central U.S.

Less than an hour after Wednesday's storm blew through, a destroyed mailbox lay on Westwood Avenue among broken branches, a few trash cans tossed on their sides. A block from Maurer's home, two men had already gotten to work with chainsaws on a tree that had fallen onto another house.

Immediately following reports from the National Weather Service in Morristown, Tenn., of golf ball- and tennis ball-sized hail falling in Marion County, the storm continued east, rolling over Hamilton County and causing a wave of calls about downed power lines.

According to EPB's online power outage map, North Chattanooga, Red Bank, Hixson and Signal Mountain bore the brunt of the damage in Hamilton County, with reports of "significant outages" in the storm's wake.

"There are multiple calls coming in on trees and lines down too many to list at the moment," wrote John Pless, spokesman for EPB, in an email sent at 3:30 p.m.

Pless said 5,500 people experienced a power outage greater than 5 minutes as a result of the weather, adding the Smart Grid prevented another 9,700 from losing their electricity at all. Late Wednesday afternoon, he said EPB was working to address any lingering issues.

"Crews will continue working into the night to repair damage and restore the remaining customers, about 3,000 as of 5:30 p.m.," he wrote.

A list of 25 full or partial road closures across the county was also distributed by authorities late in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, dozens of schools, government offices, churches and more were closed Wednesday in anticipation of the storm.

On a national level, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Wednesday that President Donald Trump was monitoring the situation in storm-affected states, and the White House will stay in touch with state and local officials to provide federal support as needed.

One tornado was confirmed in Tennessee by the National Weather Service, The Tennessean reported. The NWS said an EF-1 tornado caused damage with winds up to 90 mph. EF-1 tornadoes are one of the least severe on a scale of 0 to 5. Another one was spotted in Cool Springs, but it was unclear if it was the same tornado.

The western counties in Chattanooga's tri-state region reported no serious damage from Wednesday's storms, although there were reports of some impressive hail and high winds.

In Jasper, Tenn., Marion County Emergency Management Agency Director Steve Lamb said there was at least one home on South Pittsburg Mountain reportedly damaged by hail.

The NWS reported that some residents in Marion saw tennis ball-sized hail, which Lamb believed might have been mostly in the higher elevations around South Pittsburg.

A few miles to the south in DeKalb County, Ala., EMA officer Matt Martin said there were a number of reports of power outages and trees down in various places but there were no injuries or major structural damage.

"The biggest thing we've seen is some golf ball-sized hail in the Flat Rock and Ider areas," Martin said.

Jackson County, Ala., Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Rocky Harnen said folks there got mostly heavy rain and some gusty winds.

Likewise, Sequatchie County, Tenn., EMA director Winfred Smith said most of the county escaped the strong storms.

There were a couple of trees down and a power line was reported down on Lewis Chapel Mountain, but those problems were addressed as soon as the storms passed.

Elsewhere in Tennessee, Clarksville Police Department spokesman Lt. Steve Warren said a 12-year-old boy was injured Wednesday morning after a tree fell on his home.

Staff writers Emmett Gienapp and Ben Benton, the Associated Press and The Tennessean contributed to this story.

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