Update 2:
Damage in Rockmart is being cleaned up this evening after stormy weather continues to leave many without power this evening.
Polk County EMA Director Bobby Dockery sent in this photo from Tilley’s Home Furnishing in Rockmart:
Outages continue around the Goodyear Village, along Morgan Valley Road, Vinson Mountain Road and some other spots that total up to hundreds left in the dark as Georgia Power crews remain at work to restore service. Adams Road in Cedartown is the only outage still on the Cedartown side of the county.
Some minor outages are also ongoing in Esom Hill and Etna.
Multiple calls came into the Emergency Operations Center opened late this afternoon the Polk County Emergency Management Agency office.
Update:
Power outages are impacting customers once again around Polk County heading into the evening hours as severe weather has come and gone from the area.
The Polk County EMA’s Emergency Operations Center opened this afternoon to respond to any damage, and have been receiving calls from the community about downed trees and power lines in the aftermath of a system that pushed through from North Alabama and through Polk County starting around 4:30 p.m. and has mostly passed through, though some bands of rainfall are still pushing through on the tail end of severe weather.
Today’s round of stormy weather brought with it heavy rains, winds and frequent lightning once again, which has taken a toll.
Currently, the power is out for the same group of customers in the middle of Polk, extending from Raiford Road near the intersection with Collard Valley Road to Aragon-Taylorsville Road, impacting about half of the residents of the City of Aragon at the moment. The southern end of the outage includes customers around Bellview Road, and extends northward all the way to the Live Oak Road/Dean Road area. Currently that knocked out more than 1,600 customers.
Around another 1,500 are without power from western Rockmart on a stretch down Morgan Valley Road and includes all of Stringer Road to Bethlehem Road. An additional outage around those areas also includes Bethlehem Road and under 100 customers, and another 175 customers in the Tolbert Town/Hutchins Mountain Road area. Vinson Mountain Road also is experiencing an afternoon outage.
305 customers in the Goodyear Village are also without power in Rockmart.
On the western side of the county, a portion of West Avenue, Wissahickon Street and the surrounding neighborhood is without power as well, impacting around 200 customers currently. A little over 50 customers are also without power in the Adams Road area off of Highway 27 North.
Storms impacting neighboring counties have also caused outages in Floyd County, Dallas over in Paulding County, and down in Bremen and Villa Rica in Haralson County.
Previously posted:
Look for the return of stormy weather as a system moves this way from Alabama to impact Polk County late into the afternoon and evening hours based on National Weather Service forecasting.
The NWS in Peachtree City has Polk under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch again, this time through 8 p.m., August 7, 2023. The chance of showers and thunderstorms are increasing into the evening hours and will drop off overnight.
Expect severe weather to begin moving in over the next couple of hours from North Alabama as a system currently west of Gadsden (at the time of writing just after 4 p.m.) heads toward Polk, Floyd and Haralson Counties. The watch includes counties immediately around Polk as well including Bartow, Floyd, Haralson, and Paulding counties.
The Metro Atlanta area is also under a severe thunderstorm watch as well as Northeast Georgia.
Temperatures rose into the 90s but felt hotter than that as the NWS in Peachtree City called for a high up to 95 this afternoon and heat index values up to 103.
The NWS expects at least a quarter of an inch of rain heading into the evening before storms push through.
Chances of severe weather are less for the coming days, but remain in the forecast.
This latest round of storms comes after homes were damaged by falling trees and power was knocked out for thousands of customers across the region in the aftermath of Sunday afternoon storms.
Check back for more as the storms develop late into the afternoon and evening hours.
