Andrews – Cecilia Rosales Tinoco watched as a severe storm front neared his home on the 1300 block of Fairview Road on Monday afternoon.
Ferocious wind, rain and hail swept off the River Valley on the leading edge of an eastbound storm front that brought havoc throughout the region, with downed trees, blocked roads, power outages and more.
For Tinoco, the storm bore down on him with breathtaking speed, yet he counts himself as lucky. The storm took down trees to the left and right of his hillside home, crossed over Fairview Road and took down an ancient oak tree, but left him and his home unscathed.
His story is similar to countless others throughout not only Cherokee County, but the western Carolinas and northeast Georgia as well. One death was reported in Anderson, S.C., where a 15-year-old boy was struck and killed by a fallen tree as he was getting out of a car.
Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C.-based National Weather Service meteorologist Bill Martin said the storm was spawned from a combination of warm air and a high dew point – sultry humidity combined with an unstable air mass, compounded by an upper level storm that resulted in shearing and lifting.
The storm produced winds up to 70 mph and hail up to 1 inch in diameter, but 95 percent of the damage was wind-caused, he said.
On a scale of 1 to 10, he rated this storm event at 8. The only saving grace was that it didn’t produce tornadoes, although the National Weather Service did issue tornado watches for an area spanning from Spring Hill, Tenn., to well east of Asheville.
“It was a significant wind event,” he said.
The storm dumped a half inch of rain on Murphy. Power outages were widespread, with Duke Energy reporting right at 5,000 power outages affecting more than 250,000 customers in the Carolinas. Line crews worked through the day Monday and throughout the night working to restore power. By 9 a.m. Tuesday, there were still 4,000 outages affecting 60,000 customers in its coverage area.
Accuweather described the weather outbreak as the worst since March. A summertime pattern of occasional thunderstorms was predicted to last through the week, although the severity could escalate.