The Champion has posted some pics of trees down in and around Decatur.  The tree above is across Candler just south of Agnes Scott.

Click here to see the full series.  The first five pics are from Stone Mountain, the sixth is the pic above, and the last 4 are on Glenn St. just off Ponce near the Avondale MARTA Station.

Feel free to add links to any other storm pics you come across.

The AJC’s pics from around Atlanta can be found here.

Take note parents.

From the CSD website…

The City of Decatur has experienced problems with electrical power today. Each CSD facility has been operational: teaching children, serving lunch, and running buses. The Fire Chief has indicated to us that several roads are still problems for vehicles. We anticipate that school buses will have a difficult time navigating these roads; thus, students that ride the buses may not be able to reach their homes. If that happens, buses are required to bring the students back to school. You may wish to pick up your child today from school if you anticipate these crossings may impact your child’s trip home: South Candler at Kirk; 800 Block of South Candler; East Ponce at Mountain View.

h/t: gomommy

UPDATE II: Linda Harris reports at least 18 trees or major limbs down around the city.

UPDATE: There are a LOT of trees down in the city.  From comments it seems like at least 6 or 7 so far at various locations.  Reports of car fires, trees through houses and cars.

Here are affected areas reported thus far….Adiar/Ponce, Ponce Place, Kathryn Ave, Clifton, Jefferson Place, DHS Garden, Howard/Commerce, 2nd Ave, Oakview near Community Garden, South Candler between Kirk and Green.

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Power has been hinky in Decatur since last night.  The AJC reports this morning that power was restored to 2,000 customers that lost power overnight.  (Personally, we only had a momentary outage in Ponce Heights).

But again this morning, there are more reports of outages, trees down and lines down across Decatur.

Not to be confused with community blogs, hyperlocal websites like EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger and Patch, aggrigate content for city neighborhoods across the country.

A profile in this morning’s NY Times shows that each of these sites takes  a unique approach to news creation/gathering.  Everyblock (not currently in ATL), Outside.in and Placeblogger all are powered mainly through aggregation of local blogs and news media.  Everyblock actually goes one step further and also collects and posts things like police reports and restaurant inspections.  Patch is more “community bloggerish”, with more original content of three NJ neighborhoods.

In Atlanta, Kim’s CommunityRadar.com is a good example of a “hyperlocal” aggregator/site.  WABE is also working on a model called Lens On Atlanta, which will focus heavily on promoting discussion (with many of the same “rules” that apply on DM interestingly enough!)

Time will tell whether these sites can fill the metro area news gaps.  As always, money is an issue.  A couple of the sites profiled by the Times sites are sponsored by grants and foundation money, but ultimately they will need to prove profitable.  Additionally content will prove challenging for those sites which don’t produce any of their own, if local newspapers keep folding.

This is certainly a trend worth watching.  My major concern about these sites, in addition to the more universal ones stated above, is the ability to create a loyal, passionate online community.  I think things like site origination  (who created it and why?) and coverage area work against a larger site’s possible success.  Many, spurred by dreams of torrents of ad revenue, try to be too many things to too many people.  As a result, any sense of community is lost.

Can this deficit be overcome?  Probably.  We’ve sacrificed much at the alter of conveinence and profit in the past century.  But I still think that the most valuable sites are the ones that sprout from within existing communities.

But does valuable = enduring?

Thanks to Judy for pointing out this article!