Storm snaps power pole, leaves hundreds without power in Morgan County

Hundreds of Morgan County residents were left without electricity after a severe Saturday afternoon storm in Jacksonville snapped a power pole in half, and utility crews were still working to restore service with no estimated timeline posted.

The outage hit households across the county as the storm damage cut power to homes and businesses in and around Jacksonville, the county seat. Ameren Illinois said customers can check or report outages through its outage map, mobile app, text alerts or customer service line, and the company said its outage map is updated every 10 minutes.

By mid-May, Ameren’s outage map showed 4,094 Illinois customers without service systemwide, a figure that was not limited to Morgan County. That statewide total put the local outage in a broader pattern of severe-weather disruptions that can spread quickly across western Illinois when storms bring down lines or poles.

The latest outage comes after an April 17 severe-weather event that left roughly 25,000 Ameren customers without power across the service area. In that storm, utility damage also included knocked-down poles north of a substation, a reminder that one line of damage can cascade into large-scale outages when weather turns severe.

Morgan County has already seen how quickly storm damage can spread beyond one neighborhood. A tornado assessment from last month found the hardest hit area was concentrated in northwest Jacksonville and then farther into Morgan County, with damage to powerlines, trees and houses throughout the area. The storm’s footprint showed that infrastructure exposed in one part of the county can be vulnerable well beyond the first impact zone.

For Jacksonville and the surrounding county, the latest outage is another test of local resilience, from utility response times to the condition of poles, lines and other storm-battered infrastructure. Until power is restored, residents are being pushed back onto outage tools and status updates as crews work through damage across Morgan County.