Six Alabama rural electric cooperatives are sending 45 men and equipment to help restore weather-related outages affecting members of Tombigbee Electric Cooperative in northwest Alabama.

As of Thursday morning, some 7,000 outages were reported in the Tombigbee service area, which serves about 10,000 members in Marion, Lamar and Fayette counties. The area was hit hard by more than 10 inches of wet, heavy snow that snapped trees and power lines.

Cooperatives sending crews and equipment to help in the effort are Central Alabama, Coosa Valley, Dixie, South Alabama, Pioneer and Black Warrior EMC.

Outages were also reported in areas served by Cullman Electric Cooperative, North Alabama Electric Cooperative and Joe Wheeler Electric Cooperative, but power is being restored by crews from those cooperatives.

The cooperatives are members of AREA, a federation of 22 not-for-profit electric cooperatives that provides dependable electricity to more than 1 million Alabamians in 64 counties.