The heat and drought continued to smother the area until an unexpected and isolated storm hammered Gallatin around 2:30 Friday afternoon.

“There was a little damage out in the county, but for the most part, it was the south side of Gallatin that got hit the hardest,” said Ken Weidner, director of the Sumner County Emergency Management Agency. “There were a lot of trees down, and some property damage.”

Weidner said there was no tornadic activity that he had seen.

“Straight line winds – that's what we're thinking,” he said.

The storm left about 10,000 homes without power, according to Bill Draper, Manager of the Gallatin Department of Electricity.

“Most people went without power from somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour-and-a-half, depending on where they were located,” he said. “After about an hour-and-a-half, we had it down to about 500 without power and down to about 60 by midnight.”

“We worked all night long, and we got almost everybody back on line by about 7a.m.,” he said. “There were nine homes that had damage where we couldn't get them power by then, but everybody else was back by 7 a.m. But we kept one crew on until about 10 am cleaning up odds and ends and helping those nine families.”

The hardest hit hardest were around Park Avenue, Murray and Bentley streets and the Nashville Pike end of Lock 4 Road, according to the Electric Department.

“There were several calls out in regards to the power outage,” said Katrina Bowling, with the Gallatin Police Department. “There was a lot of street lights out, so we had a lot of officers out directing traffic. And we had some officers checking subdivisions for down power lines and making sure everything was okay.”

“We did have a couple of property damage accidents,” Bowling said before mentioning the most important aspect. “But going over the call sheet it doesn't look like we had any calls for injuries (at that time).”

By Josh Nelson