Metro Atlanta cleans up after severe storms snap trees, cause outages

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — Thousands of people are without power Sunday after severe storms rolled through the night before.

Trees were down in several neighborhoods across Atlanta. According to the Georgia Power outage map, nearly 5,000 customers were without electricity at the height of the outages.

Around noon, that number had shrunk to around 2,000 customers.

In one neighborhood, a tree and power line apparently caught fire earlier in the night. Atlanta Fire Rescue put the blaze out.

Trees were reported down in several communities, including Inman Park off Edgewood Avenue as well as on Butner Road in East Point.

Venus Prather said she heard a huge tree crash around 5:30 Saturday night.

“I was in the house watching TV and the lights went out and then I look out my bedroom window and I saw the tree going across the street just laying down,” she said. “I said, Oh God, thank you, thank you,’ because I didn’t want it to fall on my house.”

In Braselton, a thunderstorm ripped the scaffolding off the Northeast Georgia Medical Center (see the gallery above for pictures).

As of now, no injuries have been reported.

It’s a First Alert Weather Day due to a heat index that will feel like triple digits along with the possibility of more powerful storms this afternoon and evening.

This is a developing story. Stay with Atlanta News First as we learn more.