Nearly a full day of heavy, steady and often rainy straight line winds created momentary traffic snarls in North Alabama and caused power outages late Monday and throughout Tuesday in Athens, Cullman and widely scattered portions of rural Cullman County. But as the winds began slightly to subside late Tuesday, the wild, windy start to this week left the area with no reports of injury, or of severe or persisting damage from flooding or fallen trees.

With north Alabama under a wind advisory from late Monday through the midnight hour into Wednesday morning, Monday’s late-day onset of sustained winds in excess of 20 mph created early power outages in the city of Cullman.

The Cullman Power Board reported Monday evening that all of its in-town outages had been resolved, including a brief but significant outage shortly before 7 p.m. that darkened the northern portion of the U.S. Highway 31 corridor, taking traffic signals offline and tasking city police officers with traffic control at busy major intersections.

An attempt to reach CPB by phone was unsuccessful. Cullman Police Chief David Nassetta told The Cullman Times Tuesday that none of the city’s Monday outages “put any undue stress on, or required extra duty from our department.“

The strong winds continued into Tuesday, with a Limestone County Emergency Management Agency representative noting that 240 utility customers in the Athens area were without power early in the day — though service was expected to be restored in short order. Limestone EMA indicated no further reports of flooding or significant wind damage in the county, with the only other reported incident involving a fire department call-out to Toney on Monday.

The winds also took out power service in sporadic and typically small outage occurrences across rural Cullman County, where the largest outage temporarily cut power late Monday to 1,400 Cullman Electric Cooperative members along Eva Road, according to Co-op communications manager Brian Lacy. In all, the cooperative reported 41 widely scattered separate power outages affecting 2,400 of its members. Nearly all of the outages, said Lacy, owed to downed trees or falling limbs across Co-op power lines.

Cullman EMA director Tim Sartin said Tuesday that his office had received no Cullman County reports of significant damage or injury from the early week wind and rain event. Daytime temperatures are expected briefly to warm into the high 50s on Thursday and Friday as a fresh round of precipitation visits the area, bringing the possibility of more wind and rain on Friday before the thermometer takes a projected steep weekend dive.

Daytime highs are expected to remain in the 40s through this weekend, with evening temperatures on Saturday and Sunday falling into the mid-20s. The real chill, though, is set to kick in early next week, when a strong blast of cold air is set to push into the region, driving anticipated overnight temperatures next Tuesday and Wednesday into the teens or even single digits.