From finding yourself in a mess of mud in the middle of a Louisiana bayou to thawing out the door handle of your truck during an Arkansas ice storm, there are a wide range of challenges that Entergy lineworkers face during storm restoration.

Our crews continue their restoration efforts in north Mississippi and have restored power to more than half of the 10,203 customers who were affected by this latest winter storm. As of 1:15 p.m., we have 3,528 outages, with the majority of those in DeSoto County. We are still assessing in some areas and expect to be 100% assessed by the end of the day, assuming no new weather-related outages.  We anticipate being able to restore the vast majority of outages in Tunica by 10:00 p.m. tonight, but may have a few carry over to Saturday.

We’ve been monitoring the winter weather over the past several days and are ready to respond to any outages.  Our initial forecast indicated a storm that was going to primarily be north and west of our service area, but the weather has slipped further to the south over the past day.  We’ve relocated the majority of our baseload contractors to Cleveland, Senatobia and Tunica, and have acquired non-baseload contractors that will be located in Southaven.  Additionally, two Entergy Mississippi teams from the south half of the state are moving to the area today.  We’re beginning to see some ice accumulation, and as of 11:20 Thursday morning we have approximately 6,890 customers out statewide with the majority of those being in Desoto County.