Nobody thought about the fog. After months of preparation for the dawning of 2000, fog was the only thing that caught officials and celebrants off-guard Friday night.

&uot;We prepared for everything you could think of but fog,&uot; said Adams County Sheriff Tommy Ferrell. &uot;God created that, not Y2K. (And) we’re dealing with it.&uot;

The heavy blanket of fog covered the Miss-Lou just before midnight, reducing visibility to a few feet in downtown Natchez.

&uot;I just hope the fog doesn’t cause problems,&uot; said George Souderes, Adams County Civil Defense director, as his concerns quickly shifted to the fog.

As the wall clock’s second hand swept over the numeral 12 in Souderes’ office, he sighed in relief.

Y2K was here and so, apparently, were the county’s major utilities.

&uot;Systems appear to be functioning,&uot; Souderes said gleefully.

Souderes was still optimistically cautious in his praise of the county’s successful rollover into the year 2000.

&uot;Small glitches could show up later on,&uot; he said. &uot;But they probably could be handled without us even knowing it.&uot;

In Concordia Parish, officials reported no utility outages or Y2K-related problems, although Ferriday Police Chief Eddie Newman said the fog &uot;is as thick as pea soup – or worse.&uot;

Riverland Medical Center in Ferriday not only made it through the Y2K rollover with no problems, it also delivered the first baby of the millennium in the Miss-Lou at 1:02 a.m.

A few minutes after midnight, Bell South reported no phone traffic congestion in the state of Mississippi, said Larry Greer, regional director of corporate and external affairs.

In fact, Pat Howard, BellSouth’s manager of corporate affairs, was in Natchez, celebrating – with her beeper close at hand. &uot;We’re not expecting any problems,&uot; she said.

&uot;We had one case of trouble in the Pine Mount subdivision,&uot; said Percy McCaa, manager of Southwest Mississippi Electric Power Association.

About 50 residences were without power when a car struck a power pole in that area.