Thousands without power after severe weather in Mississippi

Severe weather has to clear the area before an assessment of power restorations can be made, an Entergy Mississippi official said Thursday.

As of 4:35 p.m. there were 28,113 customers without power after a tornado outbreak. Entergy spokeswoman Mara Hartmann said conditions have to be safe before utility workers can survey the affected areas and determine the extent of the damage. Entergy customers can keep up with the status of outages on their outage viewer map.

Southern Pine Electric said in a press release that over 5,000 members were without power as of 3:30 p.m. Keep up with outages on their outage viewer website.

More:Live coverage of tornado outbreaks in Mississippi