Power restored to thousands after lightning strike

John Boyle | The Citizen-Times

ASHEVILLE — A lightning strike that caused a tree to fall on power lines in the Elk Mountain area north of town left about 21,000 Duke Energy Progress customers without power after 3 p.m. Wednesday.

But Duke district manager Jason Walls said at 8:30 a.m. Thursday that power had been restored to all customers by about 9 p.m. Wednesday night.

Earlier in the day, a "really strong lightning and thunderstorm passed through the area,” affecting transmission lines and three substations, Walls said.

The outage affected the substations behind the U.S. Cellular Center downtown, as well as one on Elk Mountain and on Craggy Mountain, to the north.

"Our crews did respond very, very quickly, and they were able to isolate where the problem was," Walls said. "They were able to clear the trees and do some switching to get power back on."

The outage stretched from downtown Asheville north into the Grove Park, Beaverdam and Woodfin communities.

In downtown Asheville, the outage led to sluggish traffic on major thoroughfares such as Patton Avenue, where motorists tangoed their ways through intersections. Businesses temporarily closed and some residents opened windows for fresh air as their air conditioning was inoperative.

Wednesday's storms were stronger than is usual in the mountains, said Bill Martin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Greer, South Carolina, which tracks Asheville weather.

"Most of them have left an inch or so of rain, but there are places where it's been over an inch and a couple of places that had close to two inches," Martin said.

The heaviest rain fell to the east of Asheville. The storms are fast-moving, Martin said, so they're dropping that amount of rain in 20-30 minutes.

Asheville Regional Airport recorded about an inch of rain from the midafternoon thunderstorm.

Wednesday's storms were worse than what the mountain regional has been experiencing this month.

"It's a combination of ingredients, with moisture coming in from the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, and the storms coming in over the mountains from Tennessee," Martin said. "These are upper level storms, and when you combine them with the lower level moisture, they're pretty decent thunderstorms."

The forecast called for showers through Wednesday evening, eventually clearing around midnight.

"Then there's a chance of thunderstorms again (Thursday) afternoon," Martin said.