Thursday morning residents in south central Limestone County near Calhoun Community College experienced what Limestone Emergency Management says was a possible tornado, pending confirmation from the National Weather Service.

“Decatur right there at the boat harbor is where it kind of came in at,” Emergency Management Officer Daphne Ellison said. “I think Jay’s Landing and Ingalls Harbor had the most damage there.”

“We mainly had just trees and power line damage,” Ellison said.

One resident on Garrett Road had a tree fall and damage the roof of their home, Ellison said. On Humphrey and Fennel Roads a shed with farm equipment under it sustained storm damage. The baseball and softball fields at Calhoun sustained storm damage on its buildings and cage area. A row of homes off of Highway 31 south of Calhoun also sustained damage from tree debris.

On Thursday at 3:00 p.m. Grant Coordinator for the City of Athens Holly Hollman said, “Athens Utilities reports it is replacing broken utility poles south of Calhoun Community College. Once that work is complete, most of the remaining outages should have power restored. Less than 100 customers remain without power in that area, down from 4,300 customers who were initially impacted by the storm-related outages this morning in SE Limestone County.”

“We’ll still have some cleanup to take care of tomorrow [Friday],” Athens Electric Department Manager Blair Davis said on Thursday.

Students across Athens-Limestone sheltered in place during the tornado warning that swept through from 8:15 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.

“We got to test our new tornado shelter … during the tornado warnings in Limestone County,” iAcademy Principal Amanda Tedford said. “Our students did so well transitioning to the shelter and were all safe and calm during the passing storms.”

She went on to say, “I am so appreciative of our teachers and school staff for always being prepared during severe weather warnings. We are very grateful to have a safe place to shelter during inclement weather.”

The EMA didn’t anticipate such volatile weather during the early morning round of storms.

“We really weren’t expecting the weather to get that bad,” Ellison said. “You just never know when it comes in. We handled it well.”

“We went under a tornado watch about seven o’clock. Which we were expecting maybe some straight line winds, but like I said, I think they weren’t expecting it to be that severe,” Ellison said. “At that time that morning, the way it was looking it was going to be more severe after the morning.”

“Just everything kind of came together sooner they they expected,” she said.

If you have storm photos or photos of storm damage, send them to newscouriersoundoff@gmail.com.