By Shirley Gorman

SDN News Editor

The first thunderstorm of spring blew through Snyder and Scurry County late Wednesday afternoon, producing sporadic power outages, snapping poles and downing power lines.

Golf ball size hail was reported in the south part of Scurry County, resulting in broken windows at the homes of Mark Cullifer and Bill Bell and others in that area.

Randy Ward, TXU representative, said full crews were out and all service was restored by 1 a.m. today. Damage included three broken utility poles -- one on the Old Lubbock Highway and two in Ira.

The storm also felled a tree that blocked the road on the north side of East Elementary.

The scattered electrical outages included 48th St., and Wal-Mart where power was restored after about 45 minutes, according to R.J. Younglaus, manager. Skinny’s on 37th Street also reported a power outage due to lightning hiting a transformer.

The storm also kept Big Country Cooperative’s crews busy. David Boyd, manager of the Snyder office, said one pole was damaged south of Union and the lightning caused several transformers to trip.

He said the longest outage lasted less than an hour. Big Country has a system to check substations during storms so Boyd said work crews were en route before the first calls came in.

“When the weather is at its worst, that’s usually when people need us,” Boyd said. He noted that Wednesday’s damage came on the heels of a similar storm a couple of weeks ago.

He added that they appreciated the understanding of the people who called to report problems yesterday.

The official rain report at the city water plant was .45 of an inch, there were individual reports of almost one inch inside the city limits.

Round Top Acres, south of Snyder, reported 2.2 inches and small hail.