MONROE COUNTY, Miss. (WTVA) — Severe weather left behind damage in Monroe County Wednesday night.
"We had one business located in Aberdeen receive some damage to the awning over the gas pumps," says Monroe County Emergency Management Director Bunky Goza. "Also, we had two structures in the Splunge community. We received calls about widespread power outages as well as numerous limbs and trees across roads."
The most significant damage occurred in Splunge where Nell Grant's stepmother's house was affected.
"[My stepmother] called me screaming that half of her trailer was gone," says Grant. "She said she had just gotten ready to go to bed, and it just started shaking. The pictures were falling off the wall, and she said it scared her to death."
Monroe County was never under a tornado warning Wednesday night, but officials with the National Weather Service say that proves even severe thunderstorms can be dangerous.
"Severe thunderstorms can and do occasionally produce tornadoes," says National Weather Service representative Ed Ingram. Doing the preliminary survey, [we established] there was an EF0 tornado with winds up to 75 or 80 miles per hour."
The number one thing the National Weather Service suggests is installing a storm shelter and, if possible, converting an entire room into a safe room that meets federal standards to keep people from being out in the storm.
Often, mobile homes get more damage from storms, but Ingram says one thing helped keep this structure standing.
"If it wasn't tied down, easily, this trailer could have fallen over, and it could have been very dangerous," says Ingram.
