From downed trees to hail, it was a stormy start to the holiday weekend around central North Carolina.
WRAL meteorologists made Saturday a Weather Alert Day not only for the intense heat in the afternoon, but also for the elevated risk of storms in the late afternoon and evening. There were several severe thunderstorm warnings issued throughout the afternoon.
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Wendell, in particular, saw a lot of damage from a line of storms. Off Lake Myra Road and Kelly Lane, the WRAL Stormtracker spotted several trees that were knocked down, blocking the roadways and damaging power lines.
On North Magnolia Street, part of a tree fell onto a home, and on Wendell Falls Parkway, part of a gas station awning was taken down by strong winds.
Officials with the town of Wendell said traffic lights were without power, and urged residents to drive with caution.
Wendell firefighters told WRAL they had no reported injuries as of Saturday night.
Wendell wasn't the only place hit by strong storms on Saturday. In Raleigh, a large tree fell into the parking lot of an apartment complex on Calumet Drive.
The storms also knocked out power for thousands of Duke Energy customers. At the peak of the storm, Duke's outage map was tracking several outages for customers:
- Wake County: 6,729 outages.
- Chatham County: 3,262 outages.
- Lee County: 3,328 outages.
- Moore County: 2,317 outages.
- Cumberland County: 3,583 outages.
- Sampson County: 1,011 outages.
A representative with Duke Energy said crews tracked around 100 individual outage locations around Wake County, and about 50,000 customers out in Eastern NC.