More than 30,000 Duke customers lose power as severe storms pummel Charlotte area again
For the second straight day, powerful storms knocked out power to thousands of Duke Energy customers in the Charlotte area Friday afternoon.
Just before 7 p.m., more than 166,000 Duke Energy customers had no power across North Carolina, including about 30,000 in the Charlotte area, and nearly 10,000 in South Carolina, according to the company’s outage map. Most Charlotte-area outages were west and northeast of Mecklenburg County in Gaston, Rowan and other counties.
About 4,000 customers were without power in both the Gastonia-Kings Mountain and Waxhaw areas, 5,400 in Rowan County and roughly 1,000 in south Charlotte, the map showed.
A line of severe storms with hail and 60-mph gusts swept into Gaston, Mecklenburg, Iredell and other counties at about 5:30 p.m., the National Weather Service reported.
NWS meteorologists issued severe-thunderstorm warnings for Charlotte’s airport and parts of Gaston, Union and Rowan counties.
Between 3 p.m. and 6:15 p.m., 67 flights had been delayed and 41 canceled at the airport, according to the Misery Map on flight-tracking site FlightAware.com.
On Thursday, more than 40,000 customers in the Charlotte area lost electricity after storms knocked down trees and power lines, many in the Concord-Kannapolis area. By noon Friday, only about 3,000 customers were still without power, mainly in southeast Charlotte, according to Duke Energy’s outage map..
Lightning on Thursday sparked a fire that damaged a chapel at Barber-Scotia College, one of the Charlotte area’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, a Concord spokesman confirmed.
This is a developing story.
This story was originally published June 17, 2022 at 6:15 PM.