90-mph tornado touched down near Charlotte-area high school during storms, NWS confirms
An EF-1 tornado packing 90-mph winds damaged buildings and snapped and uprooted trees in Union County as severe storms swept across the Charlotte region Wednesday morning, a National Weather Service team confirmed.
The tornado touched down near Porter Ridge High School around 8:35 a.m. and blew the school tennis court fence over, according to an NWS public information statement. No injuries were reported.
The school is on Ridge Road in Indian Trail, about 23 miles southeast of Charlotte.
Two nearby storage buildings collapsed before the twister crossed Ridge Road and heavily damaged a house under construction, the NWS team found.
Air rushed into the house through openings in windows and the garage door and lifted off part of the roof, meteorologists said.
Numerous trees were uprooted or snapped along Friendship Baptist Church Road before the tornado caused minor damage to a home in the Benton Acres neighborhood, according to the NWS.
The tornado reached Lawyers Road just west of U.S. 601, snapping several hundred yards of wood power poles but sparing adjacent homes, which were not damaged.
The NWS said the tornado traveled 2.24 miles before dissipating.
The county’s Emergency Operations Center opened to respond to the storm’s impact.
The severe weather caused 1,700 power outages in Union County, officials said.
The storms prompted the NWS to issue a tornado watch Wednesday for Mecklenburg, Cabarrus, Union and Rowan counties, as well as Rock Hill and other parts of Upstate South Carolina.
The NWS lifted the watch around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, though, as the line of storms moved east of the area.
NWS had warned that gusts up to 70 mph were likely, and hail up to a half-inch. A couple of tornadoes were possible, according to the NWS.
A tornado watch means conditions are ripe for tornadoes to form, while a tornado warning means a twister has been spotted by weather radar.
Heavy rains caused wrecks across the region, including one that closed lanes on Interstate 85 in the Belmont area and northbound between University City Boulevard and W.T. Harris Boulevard in Charlotte, state highway officials said.
Just after 9 a.m., the Charlotte crash backed up I-85 to Sugar Creek Road, Charlotte Observer news partner WSOC reported. One person was treated for non-life threatening injuries, MEDIC said.
The storms knocked out power to nearly 14,000 Duke Energy customers in the Carolinas by 9 a.m., according to the company outage map.
Only about 200 customers were without power in Mecklenburg County, primarily in the Quail Hollow and SouthPark areas of south Charlotte,
At 8 a.m., about 1,000 customers were without power in east Mooresville, several miles from Lake Norman, while about 12,000 were without power in the North Carolina mountains and 2,000 in the Winston-Salem area.
Outages in Mooresville dwindled to just a handful by 9 a.m.
Schools affected by weather
Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools announced Tuesday evening that school was canceled Wednesday because of the weather. Kannapolis schools also closed, while others operated via remote learning Wednesday.
CLT flight delays
At least 112 flights were delayed and 170 canceled at Charlotte Douglas International Airport at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, according to tracking site Flight Aware.com.
Skies began clearing before 11 a.m., and Thursday is expected to be sunny, with a high of 53. Friday’s high is predicted to reach 60, the NWS Charlotte forecast showed.
This story was originally published March 5, 2025 at 8:33 AM.