Strong storms cause power outages, airport delays in Charlotte on Saturday
Fierce storms that raced through the Charlotte area on Saturday knocked power out for thousands of customers and delayed more than 500 flights.
Gates to the Garth Brooks concert at Bank of America Stadium in uptown Charlotte opened just under 15 minutes late due to the storms. Ponchos are encouraged but umbrellas are not allowed, the stadium operators said in a tweet.
About 6,000 Duke Energy customers in Mecklenburg County had no power at 5 p.m., according to the company outage map. Crews were assessing when power will be restored.
At 4:30 p.m., about 2,000 customers without power were in an area near uptown bordered by Independence Boulevard to the south, Interstate 277 to the west, Hawthorne Lane to the east and North Davidson Street and East 18th Street to the north, the map showed.
Another 700 were without power southwest of uptown in the Revolution Park-West Boulevard area and several hundred more were in Ballantyne in south Charlotte.
By 6:30 p.m., total outages fell to about 4,000 and by 9 p.m. to about 1,000, the map showed.
Traffic signals were out on the CityLynx Gold Line at Sunnyside Avenue and Hawthorne Lane, along with Charlottetowne Avenue and Elizabeth. Avenue, CATS announced on Twitter just after 6 p.m.
“Streetcars are performing stop and proceed at both intersections,” CATS reported.
Flights delayed, canceled
At least 536 flights were delayed and 132 canceled at Charlotte’s airport by 9 p.m., according to FlightAware.com, which tracks flights at the nation’s airports.
That included 285 departure delays, or 40% of total departures, and 251 incoming delays, or 34%; 69 departures canceled, or 9%, and 63 incoming canceled, or 8%.
Scattered thunderstorms were expected to develop into Saturday night, according to the NWS office in Greer, S.C.
Strong pop-up thunderstorms have pummeled Mecklenburg and surrounding counties all summer.
On Saturday, July 9, 7,000 Duke Energy customers in southern Mecklenburg County lost power and 383 flights were delayed due to severe weather.
The Charlotte forecast
This weekend’s storm threat is predicted to diminish to 30% on Sunday, mainly from 2 to 4 p.m., and to 20% by Sunday night, the NWS Charlotte forecast at 5 p.m. Saturday showed.
Saturday’s 90-degree high is expected to repeat on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, before climbing to 93 Wednesday and 94 Thursday, according to the NWS forecast. Friday’s high could dip to 91, before Saturday’s rises to 94, the forecast showed.
Most days should be partly to mostly sunny, with a repeat chance of afternoon storms throughout the week, NWS forecasters said.
This story was originally published July 16, 2022 at 5:10 PM.