By NEAL WAGNER / City Editor

The Shelby County School System will dismiss Riverchase Middle School students at 9:30 a.m. today, as an overnight lightning strike at the school has caused a schoolwide power outage.

Shelby County Schools spokeswoman Cindy Warner said lightning struck a power transformer sometime Sunday night, and said school personnel arrived on Monday morning to discover the power outage.

“At first we weren’t sure how long it was going to take Alabama Power to fix it, but it looks like it is going to take them the rest of the day,” Warner said at about 9 a.m. “So we are going to have to dismiss the students early.”

Warner said the school will follow its regular dismissal procedure at 9:30 a.m., and will run school buses.