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With Hurricane Sally slowly making it’s way to the gulf coast, officials at South Alabama Electric Cooperative are starting to prepare in Pike County.

Hurricane Sally is expected to make landfall some time in the next 24 hours. Although rain will be the biggest threat, high winds could make an impact as well.

SEAC is spending time talking with the weather service, trying to get a better understanding of the storm so they can be better prepared when it enters the area.

“We got a pretty good weather service that lets us know things every six hours or so and they are giving us the latest and the greatest prediction of the wind speed and the direction the storm is going to take,” SAEC Manager of Member Services Andy Kimbro. “It’s a discussion that talks about the wind shear and the currents and a prediction on what the hurricane will do. It’s a good prediction that allows us to stay hours and several days prepared ahead of time.”

As of Tuesday afternoon the forecast calls for Pike County to have sustained winds up to around 35 mph. According to Kimbro that’s not enough to cause significant damage.

“When you get passed 40 mph sustained winds you start having some severe issues with broken trees and power polls,” Kimbro said. “It appears with what we are looking at now that it’s not going to be the case with our area. Based on what we have been looking at and what we have been told, the highest sustained winds is 40 mph and that band is touching the southwest corner of Crenshaw County. You are going to have some wind gusts and some power outages but it’s nothing compared to what it could have been.”

If customers do lose power during the storm they can reach out in many different ways.

“If that happens we encourage our members to please contact us immediately,” Kimbro said. “Let us know about your outage and report it. They can call our 800 number and they can do so via our app (SAEC Coonect). We encourage members to call the 800 number whenever they lose power because it’s automatically reported through our system.”