Winter storm knocks out power to thousands of Avoyelleans

Thousands of homes and businesses in Avoyelles have lost power at some time today due to the winter storm that has brought freezing rain to the area. Earlier this morning 7,097 of Avoyelles Parish's 21,717 were without electricity. By 2 p.m. that number had been reduced to 3,640, according to the online poweroutage.us website. While Entergy was reporting the most outages earlier today -- 4,384 of its 5,764 customers in the parish -- at 2 p.m. Cleco had the most with 2,565 of its 15,252 customers out of power. Entergy was reporting 1,075 outages.

The parish's third utility company, SLEMCO in the southern area, was reporting no outages among its 701 customers.

2:30 P.M. UPDATE: Over half of Avoyelles Parish utility customers -- 10,909 of 21,717 -- were without power as of 2:30 p.m., indicating a worsening trend. Avoyelles Today will post periodic updates on the situation to keep those able to access the website up to date on developments.