While Hurricane Gustav went a few hundred miles to our west, the storm caused plenty of excitement here in Southern Baldwin County.

Reports have come to this office of a tornado touching down in Elsanor, and for the first time, the Baldwin County Coliseum in Robertsdale was opened to shelter people from the storm. Some 2,000 customers were without power during the storm, but a Baldwin EMC spokesperson said power has been restored.

Even on Tuesday, the storm was not over for some.

“I have to go and issue a tornado warning,” said Kirk Caceres of the National Weather Service as he was being interviewed by phone Tuesday morning.

Even though the storm has passed, it caused a great deal of “instability in the atmosphere, which spawns tornadoes,” Caceres explained. “We have been busy putting warnings out.”

“We had a lot of tornado reports (during the storm) Caceres said. “We got a lot from Florida, from the towers at Egllin (Air Force Base) and Pensacola Naval Air Station.”

According to Caceres, “the Baldwin County EMA told us about the Elsanor tornado.”

Schools were out in Baldwin County Tuesday, but that was not a free day for students. According to an e-mail from Terry Wilhite of the Baldwin County School System, “As is indicated on the school calendar, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (Nov. 26) will be used as the hurricane make up day. The school calendar can be found at www.bcbe.org.”

Baldwin County Emergency Management Agency Public Information Officer Paula Tillman said, “We did have a tornado touch down in Elsanor Monday.” According to Tillman, two mobile homes and a house suffered “minimal” damage in the twister.

According to Karen Moore, a spokesperson for Baldwin County EMC, there were “less than 2,000” customers who lost power during the storm.

“Our guys did a great job,” said Moore, who added that Baldwin EMC works “year-round to make sure the system is in good shape to withstand a storm.”

In fact, Moore said the Baldwin EMC was preparing Tuesday to send off “About 34 employees” who have volunteered to go to work in the hard-hit Houma, La., area.

“This is how the cooperative system works,” said Moore. “When we were hit by Ivan, about 1,000 cooperative employees volunteered to come here.”

The storm was also the debut of the Baldwin County Coliseum as a hurricane shelter, Tillman said.

“We couldn’t ask for things to go better,” Tillman said, adding that the shelter housed about 300 people during the storm, including about 40 individuals who had to be evacuated from a campground near the Styx River “at around 1 a.m. Tuesday morning.”

All in all, Tillman said “things went pretty well.”

“I think all the preparation helped,” said Tillman. “Everybody reacted as they needed to. It was not the extremes of weather, but everyone heeded the evacuation warnings and everyone seemed prepared. We’ve all learned from past storms.”