By Ndg Syndicate

Hurricane Dennis’ bark proved to be worse than its bite for many Alabama residents expecting more after the destruction Ivan caused last fall.

The storm, which dropped to a Category 3 storm before making landfall between Pensacola and Navarre Beach on the northwest Florida panhandle Sunday afternoon, mostly spared Alabama’s beaches, though wind damage was reported in Flomaton and rural communities like Atmore.

Dennis did leave 360,000 customers without power at one point, and the peak outage for West Alabama was 38,800 at 4 a.m. Monday. According to an Alabama Power advisory, the overall number had dropped to 110,138, including 13,792 customers in the Tuscaloosa area, by 1:30 p.m. Monday.

Alabama Power spokeswoman Audrey Vaughn said Wednesday that power had been restored to 99 percent of customers Tuesday night, but 8,000 across the state were still without power, including 3,600 in the Montgomery area, 1,980 in southeast Alabama and 1,650 in the Mobile area.

West Alabama, however, was all but back to normal as Vaughn said only 27 customers were without power Wednesday.

Vaughn said that power should return to most customers soon.

“We’ve made tremendous progress getting these numbers down,” Vaughn said.

The statewide peak for Dennis is much less than Ivan, which left 825,000 Alabama Power customers in the dark at one point.

There was no major damage at the Capstone, said UA spokeswoman Cathy Andreen. She said some trees were down, including one on University Boulevard near the UA Police Department’s station. Workers toiled into the afternoon on another fallen tree in front of Little Hall.

Groundskeepers were also still cleaning up large amounts of twigs, branches and leaves strewn across roads and sidewalks Monday afternoon.

There was also a short power outage near the fraternity houses on University Boulevard on the western side of campus, Andreen said.

With the exception of residence halls and food and other essential services, the UA campus remained closed Monday.

There was also tree damage in the Tuscaloosa County towns of Samantha and Ralph, said David Hartin, director of the Tuscaloosa County Emergency Management Agency. Hartin said he had heard of car, porch and roof damage in the area, but none of it had been reported to the EMA Monday afternoon.

“There are a few places where roadways flooded, but that’s not unusual for the amount of rain we had,” he said.

Projections for Dennis’ strength in the Tuscaloosa area failed to materialize, Hartin said. A Sunday morning National Hurricane Center forecast had Dennis still at hurricane strength when it reached Tuscaloosa.

“The storm fell apart,” Hartin said.

What was left of the storm’s eye passed between Vance and Brookwood at midnight, The Tuscaloosa News reported Monday afternoon.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the remnants of Dennis were a low-pressure system centered over southern Indiana.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.