Barbara Hestand

Staff Photo by Dan Henry- - Herana Robinson rides through a flooded portion of East 11th Street in downtown Chattanooga while making his way home from work Tuesday afternoon. Robinson is a sanitation worker for the city of Chattanooga and has used his bike as primary transportation for the past two and a half years.

At 3:30 p.m., the sun was shining brightly in downtown Chattanooga and the UBS building’s digital thermometer indicated a balmy 89 degrees.

By 4:15 p.m., the lights had been out for 15 minutes in blocks north of M.L. King Boulevard and the same thermometer read 67 degrees.

A line of heavy thunderstorms moved through the area about 4 p.m., dumping as much as 2 inches in about an hour. The National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Hamilton, Meigs, Bledsoe and Rhea counties, later adding a flood advisory for those counties as well as Sequatchie County.

Trees and wires were blown down in areas of Hixson and East Chattanooga, and some traffic lights went out, according to a Chattanooga Police Department news release. Lightning is suspected in a massive fire at an East Brainerd home that required four companies to subdue, according to the Chattanooga Fire Department.

On Market Street downtown, shops had small flooding to reckon with.

“It looked like the Tennessee River had re-channeled,” said Barbara Hestand, owner of Barbara’s Hallmark at 805 Market St., who said passing cars pushed already high water levels even further up the sidewalk and into the store.

“There were just waves, like ocean waves,” Ms. Hestand said, adding that she did not expect extensive damage to her shop.

Tuesday’s high was expected to reach 96, with heat index values as high as 102 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. But the storms prevented those numbers from being reached.

The heat wave of the last two days — temperatures were between 94 and 100 — set the stage for Tuesday’s rough storms, said David Glenn, chief meteorologist for WTVC-NewsChannel 9. The area saw wind gusts of more than 40 miles per hour, he said.

Around 4:30 p.m., about 25,000 customers had lost power in North Hamilton County, East Brainerd and downtown — the latter outage lasting only 20 minutes, EPB spokeswoman Lacie Newton said.

“We have all of our crews working on it,” Ms. Newton said, but she did not list an estimated time when power would be restored fully. She said lightning, hail, and wind were mostly to blame for outages.

With the power out at the Sheraton hotel downtown, management lit candles and checked the stairs and elevators for anyone in trouble. Clients sat in the lobby, talking and remarking on how quickly the shower appeared.

The rest of the week should see cooler temperatures in the high 80s and slightly drier and calmer skies for the rest of the week, Mr. Glenn said. There still is a chance of thunderstorms, he said.

Despite the slight drop in heat, officials at the local Salvation Army centers said they are out of essential supplies for sweating out the summer heat.

Spokeswoman Kimberly George said the centers in East Lake and on McCallie Avenue have run out of drinks such as Gatorade and Powerade. The centers receive far more customers in the summer than the rest of the year, she said, and overall the number of clients had increased compared to last year.

“Whenever the homeless come to us, when they’ve been in the heat and walking, they need to have that replenishment right away,” Ms. George said.

Powdered mixes of the drinks are best and centers also need fans, food and toiletries such as deodorant, she said.

This summer has been milder and wetter than last year’s, which brought the worst drought in 118 years of records, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

“We almost got two inches of rain in Chattanooga which, for the most part, brought us back up close to normal for July,” Mr. Glenn said. “We’re still 6.5 (inches) below average, but 8 above last year. It’s going in the right direction.”

As for temperatures, Mr. Glenn said the area is in fairly normal ranges for this time of year.

“It’s been slightly warmer than last year,” he said. “So far for July we’re right at normal. Our temperatures have been normal and, after today, rainfall is at about normal.”