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The work started just after 9 p.m. Monday, once the lights flickered and went off. Twenty-three homes around Kenbridge lost power in the first round of storms Monday night. But that number quickly jumped, going from 23 to 48 and by 11:09 p.m., more than 400 homes across the county were in the dark.

“As weather had been forecasted, multiple rounds of thunderstorms hit our service territory and SEC was ready to respond as they rolled in,” said Southside Electric Cooperative Director of Operations Louis Urbine.

And that’s exactly what happened. Over the next 14 hours, crews worked to get the lights back on for local residents. Some repairs took a bit longer than others due to the damage. Some of those remained without power nearly 11 hours, with the lights coming back on just after 6 a.m. Tuesday. For others, the lights stayed off into the early afternoon hours. The issue for those final 27 is that they were in rural areas.

Monday night, work crews spent part of the time cutting down trees fallen across the road, as well as clearing debris and in some cases just flat out inventing new pathways in order to get to damaged lines. It was the same in Charlotte and Prince Edward counties, except many more people were affected. Combined, just under 3,000 people lost power in the two counties Monday night.

Overall, the damage wasn’t nearly as bad as expected. On Monday afternoon, multiple businesses closed hours early, out of concern for a series of storms the National Weather Service claimed could have wind speeds up to 75 mph. It didn’t quite reach that high Monday night and it appears this area dodged the other issues completely. The NWS had warned of quarter-sized hail and flash flooding. But as of 6 a.m. today, there were no areas in Lunenburg or Charlotte counties that had reported flooding.

THINGS WENT QUICKER THAN EXPECTED

These storms were part of a system the National Weather Service had been tracking for several days. Instead of sticking around, like the original forecast indicated, most of the storms had made it to the coast by 8 p.m. On the plus side, it looks like that weather is behind us now. Through Friday, the forecast calls for sunny skies and highs in the mid-80s.