The weather got dicy Friday afternoon in Cherokee and surrounding counties, but local residents appeared to escape the worst damage.
Cherokee County Emergency Management issued a severe thunderstorm warning at 3:12 p.m. Friday, followed quickly by a tornado warning. While there were no reports of a tornado landing here, high winds swept across the county, with gusts measured at 54 mph at Western Carolina Regional Airport in Andrews all the way up to 98 mph across the state line in Cove Mountain, Tenn.
In Ranger on Friday afternoon, the Ranger Volunteer Fire Department, Cherokee County Emergency Medical Services and N.C. Highway Patrol responded to a two-vehicle accident on Spur 60. Two lanes of the highway were shut down for some time while workers cleaned up the debris.
Heavy rains and high winds could have played a major part in causing the accident, Ranger Fire officials said. All of the occupants in the accident were taken for treatment, but the extent of their injuries is unknown.
“Please use caution during storms, slowing down and being aware of water runoff on the roadways,” reads a post from Ranger Fire’s Facebook page.
Not far away in Bellview, a giant pine tree fell with a loud thud about 5 p.m. across the only access road into and out of the Boulder Creek neighborhood off of Hedden Road, taking down power lines with it. While neighbors with chainsaws had the road cleared for traffic in about 15 minutes, power was out for 30-plus families until about 9:30 a.m. Saturday, when Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Corp. crews were finally able to make the necessary repairs.
The utility co-op, which serves north Georgia and western North Carolina, reported 121 outages affecting about 26,165 members. Trees were blown over that snapped lines and broke 18 poles throughout Blue Ridge Mountain EMC’s system.
A large outage in the Hanging Dog and Unaka areas was caused by trees blown over that tore down a three-phase line. This outage affected 2,057 members for about seven hours and fifteen minutes. You can view the company’s online outage map in a weather event at http://outage.brmemc.com:8008.
“It is often difficult for members to understand how a storm of relatively short duration can cause so much physical damage to the BRMEMC electric and fiber system,” General Manager Allan Glidewell said in a release. “I want to remind the membership that our service territory is roughly the size of Rhode Island, with over 6,300 miles of electric distribution lines.
“Our system is spread across mountainous terrain covered in forests and trees. High winds can cause a lot of damage because of this.”
Coincidentally, March 5-11 is Severe Weather Preparedness Week. In a release, Gov. Roy Cooper urged North Carolinians to prepare and practice safety plans in case severe weather strikes.
This year’s statewide tornado drill will be held at 9:30 a.m. today. For details on tornadoes and overall emergency preparedness, visit ReadyNC.gov.