Dateline: August 30, 2001

Storms bring rain, darkness to town  

Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

A rainbow arches overhead as Morris Grayson of Childress works to repair AEP-WTU’s electric distribution lines last Thursday after they were severed by one of the lightpoles at Bronco Stadium. High winds knocked the pole over. A Clarendon ISD official said the pole would be set back up and the other five poles would be strengthened this week.   Enterprise Digital Photo

Donley County finally received significant relief from a long dry period last week as rains quenched the area’s thirst, but the welcome moisture was not without consequences.

Official measurements in Clarendon totaled 2.59 inches from Thursday through Sunday morning. Greenbelt Lake’s level came up by six inches following the rain. The precipitation brought the year to date total in Clarendon to 21.91 inches.

Hail on Thursday damaged 300 to 400 acres of crops near the Armstrong County line, according to County Extension Agent Leon Church. Some damage was also reported near Lelia Lake and Hedley.

Cotton was the hardest crop hit, Church said. Some hay and watermelons were also hailed on, but the agent thought most crops will still go to harvest. Hail in Clarendon mostly knocked leaves from the trees.

Winds at Clarendon ISD knocked over the top two-thirds of one of the light poles at Bronco Stadium about 4:30 p.m. on Thursday. The steel pole snapped electric lines and disrupted power in the city for half an hour.

CISD Superintendent Monty Hysinger said school officials had heard the pole on the southwest side of the stadium squeaking earlier, and one employee discovered weakened welds on the structure. The school had called in local welder Wondell Luttrell to make repairs, and he was on the scene, preparing to go to work on the pole when the rain started.

The pole fell on top of the south wall of the stadium but did not damage the historic rock wall. At presstime, school officials said a crane was scheduled to set the pole back up Tuesday.

Electric service was also briefly disrupted last Thursday when cross arms snapped on a transmission line near Jericho about 4 p.m., according to Steve Teichelman AEP-West Texas Utilities Supervisor of Distribution Services in Childress.

Power was again cut about 7:30 p.m. when a second set of cross arms broke on an AEP-WTU transmission line outside of Memphis. At 8:20 p.m. the Donley County Sheriff’s Office recorded lights out in Memphis, Hedley, Lelia Lake, Clarendon, Howardwick, and Jericho.

Teichelman said crews were brought in from Childress and Shamrock to make repairs. Electric service was restored at 12:33 a.m. Friday. Approximately 2,000 customers were affected by the outages, AEP-WTU spokesman Linda Caton said.

The cause of the broken cross arms was wind and weathering, Teichelman said. Two service poles were also replaced later near Lelia Lake.

Following the storm on Thursday, Amarillo media reported a tornado had been sighted near Clarendon. Sheriff Butch Blackburn disputes that and says the storm did produce down draft winds that may have looked like a tornado, but local authorities spotted no rotation in the storm.

Despite the moisture, a countywide burn ban remains in effect.