{"id":48523,"date":"2024-08-05T11:58:53","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T15:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=48523"},"modified":"2024-08-05T11:59:09","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T15:59:09","slug":"thousands-of-people-in-polk-were-without-power-early-monday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/08\/05\/thousands-of-people-in-polk-were-without-power-early-monday\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of people in Polk were without power early Monday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Hurricane Debby neared the coast of Florida’s Big Bend area early Monday morning, thousands of people in Polk County awoke without power after a night of lashing wind and rain.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Lakeland Electric’s outage map <\/a>at 6:45 a.m. showed more than 2,787 people without power in 47 separate outages, the largest affecting more than 1,400 customers near Griffin and Kathleen roads. Another 900 customers were without power in the area between Lake Hollingsworth and the Polk Parkway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of an 9:50 a.m. Monday update, Lakeland Electric reported that 995 customers remained without service with 46 noted points of outage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly half the outages, about 490 are in central Lakeland around the area of Lake Hollingsworth. There is also a sizeable pocket of 100 outages in the southeast corner of Lakeland Electric’s service area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Electric crews were fast at work \u2014 the number of people affected by the south Lakeland outage fell by half in less than 5 minutes of monitoring Monday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tampa Electric Co.’s <\/a>outage map showed more than 100 outages in its area from Wahneta to Polk City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duke Energy <\/a>showed only two outages affecting single customers in East Polk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative reported Monday morning that its crews worked throughout the night to restore power to more than 30,000 homes and businesses. As of 9 a.m. Monday, 2,900 members remained without power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polk County Public Schools<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polk County Public Schools sent an early morning message to teachers who were scheduled for daylong, grade-level training events at sites throughout the county, delaying the required start time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Following this morning’s weather forecast, Superintendent (Frederick) Heid has decided to delay activities for this morning’s contact day'” the message to teachers at 6:50 a.m. said. “All meetings and trainings will be delayed until 9 a.m.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contact days are centralized teacher development days, where teachers across the county meet with other teachers and staff in their subject areas to go over new content and material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polk County remains under a tornado watch until 4 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tornado watch that was scheduled to end at 6 a.m. has been extended to 4 p.m. Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The far west side of the county, including western Lakeland and Kathleen, are also back under a tropical storm watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heavy bands of storms associated with Hurricane Debby continue to move in off the coast and across the county.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the National Weather Service, a tornado spotter reported a tornado on the ground for two minutes in southwest Bartow and the NWS said rotation was also detected by radar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the city’s Communications Director had not received any reports of significant damage or flooding by Monday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forecast for Lakeland<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the National Weather Service<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today : Showers and possibly a thunderstorm. Some of the storms could produce heavy rainfall. High near 85. Windy, with a south southwest wind around 23 mph, with gusts as high as 31 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New rainfall amounts between 2 and 3 inches possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tonight : Showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm. Some of the storms could produce heavy rainfall. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 77. Breezy, with a south southwest wind 16 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New rainfall amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday : Showers and possibly a thunderstorm. High near 89. Heat index values as high as 105. Breezy, with a southwest wind 15 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 24 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New rainfall amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday Night : Scattered showers and thunderstorms. Partly cloudy, with a low around 78. West southwest wind 11 to 13 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Hurricane Debby neared the coast of Florida’s Big Bend area early Monday morning, thousands of people in Polk County awoke without power after a night of lashing wind and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":48524,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/images-4.jpeg","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[9334],"class_list":["post-48523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-thousands-of-people-in-polk-were-without-power-early-monday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48525,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48523\/revisions\/48525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}