Saturday’s bow echo storm took less than an hour to tear through Memphis and Shelby County. But cleaning up and restoring power will take days.
More than 140,000 MLGW customers lost power during the storm. By Sunday afternoon, about 85,000 remained without electricity. MLGW President and CEO Doug McGowan said the vast majority of customers should expect to wait until Thursday evening for power to be restored.
“I would ask all customers who are without power to make a plan to be without power for several days,” McGowan said Sunday at a press briefing at the city’s Office of Emergency Management.
McGowan called the severe weather system the seventh-most damaging storm in the utility’s history. The National Weather Service described it as a bow echo storm, most common in spring and summer, characterized by bands of strong rain showers or thunderstorms that “bow out” and produce strong straight-line, devastating winds that reach the ground and spread. Saturday’s winds reached 60 to 80 miles per hour.
In some parts of the county, residents barely saw any of the storm’s effects. In others, trees crashed onto streets and power lines, utility poles snapped, and entire neighborhoods went dark.
Residents are asked to stay away from downed power lines and trees leaning against wires, which can conduct electricity.
More than 40 outside electrical crews had arrived by Sunday afternoon, with additional crews expected Sunday night and Monday morning. About 350 outside electrical technicians joined roughly 170 MLGW technicians, along with more than 200 tree crews, McGowan said — altogether, an estimated 700 to 800 people were called to work in the field.
Still, by Sunday night, the storm’s impact was spilling into the upcoming week.
Aftermath
Memphis-Shelby County Schools closed all schools and district offices Monday because of widespread power outages. District officials said more than 70,000 customers remained without power, along with 40 schools and administrative buildings.
The district’s decision was based on regular updates from MLGW on restoration efforts. At Sunday afternoon’s briefing, McGowan said 34 MSCS schools and about five private schools were without power.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young said city crews, police, firefighters and other agencies were continuing to work across the city to clear streets, manage intersections and respond to storm damage.
“We know that there are still people without power, streets that need to be cleared, and neighborhoods that are dealing with this storm damage,” Young said. “Our teams are out across all of Memphis, and they are going to stay at it.”
For residents still without electricity, the city opened community centers Sunday in Gaston, Marion Hale and Orange Mound to provide air conditioning, seating and charging stations. Those locations were scheduled to close at 7 p.m. Sunday. Residents are advised to monitor city channels for updated locations and hours Monday.
Young said Memphis police had no high-priority storm-related calls pending Sunday afternoon and no storm-related emergencies. Most calls involved traffic signal outages, blocked roads and other obstructions.
Police service technicians were being deployed to affected intersections, and Young urged drivers to treat intersections with nonworking traffic signals as four-way stops.
City crews are scheduled to begin collecting storm-related vegetation debris Monday. Residents cleaning up their property are asked to cut limbs into sections no longer than five feet before placing them at the curb.
Watching the weather
Residents still without electricity could endure several days of weather that is both uncomfortable and dangerous.
The National Weather Service forecast calls for partly sunny skies with highs in the upper 80s to low 90s Monday. Temperatures climb back into the lower 90s Tuesday and Wednesday. And heat index values could reach 95 to 100 degrees by midweek.
Thursday is expected to be mostly sunny with highs again in the lower 90s.
No organized severe weather threat is expected Monday, although thunderstorms remain possible during the first half of the week.
The forecast adds urgency to McGowan’s request that residents without electricity make plans now, particularly those who are elderly, medically vulnerable or otherwise susceptible to heat.
Young also encouraged residents with power to check on neighbors who may need help.
A storm that intensified quickly
The severity of Saturday’s storm was not apparent everywhere.
Forecasters had warned that severe thunderstorms and damaging winds were possible Saturday afternoon. But McGowan said the storm intensified rapidly as it crossed the Mississippi River, encountering sweltering heat and humidity over Shelby County.
“We understood that there might be some weather coming through,” McGowan said. “But as I understand, talking to the National Weather Service, the storm unexpectedly intensified as it came across the Mississippi River and ran into some other meteorological conditions over Shelby County.
“We had no idea that this storm of this magnitude was coming,” he said.
McGowan compared the sudden intensity of the storm to the 2003 windstorm dubbed “Hurricane Elvis” by Memphians and powerful summer storms that struck the area in 2023.
MLGW determines a storm’s severity ranking by the number of customers and the number of electrical circuits affected. By that measure, McGowan said Saturday’s storm ranks seventh in utility history.
And its impact was remarkably uneven.
“Many folks around the county didn’t experience anything,” McGowan said, even as more than 140,000 customers were affected across MLGW’s system.
On Sunday, the largest concentration of remaining outages was in southern Shelby County.
Why restoration can take days
McGowan stressed that the outages are not caused by a shortage of electricity.
“We have plenty of power supply,” he said. “This has nothing to do with available power. This is everything to do with weather impact on physical infrastructure.”
Trees fell onto lines. Poles came down. Powerful winds pushed electrical lines together, causing faults that tripped protective equipment across the system.
MLGW restores service from the largest and most critical parts of the system down to individual customers. Hospitals, water and wastewater facilities come first, followed by substations and major distribution circuits serving the largest numbers of customers. Smaller lines serving individual streets come next, followed by problems affecting individual homes.
That can make progress seem frustratingly invisible.
A damaged circuit may stretch three to five miles, McGowan said, which means the problem that is keeping a neighborhood dark and hot could be miles away.
“Just because you don’t see us out in front of your house does not mean we’re not working on the problem,” he said.
And once crews reach a damaged location, repairs still take time. A typical job takes four to six hours, while replacing a pole carrying multiple lines can take eight hours or longer, McGowan said.
Those whose homes sustained electrical damage may face an additional delay. Damage to a weatherhead, meter socket or other equipment attached to the home must be repaired by a licensed electrician and inspected before MLGW can reconnect service.
For everyone else, McGowan’s advised patience — and preparation.
“Nobody wants it back on faster than we do,” he said.
