A storm that blew through York County on Wednesday afternoon with gusts topping 40 mph snapped tree limbs, toppled trees and left thousands without power.
"We've had limbs down everywhere," said Cotton Howell, director of York County Emergency Management. "We had a lot of limbs and trees across roads, causing a lot of traffic tie-ups. Thankfully, we've had no serious injuries attributed to the windstorm."
Around 3:45 p.m., peak wind speed was 44 mph at the Rock Hill/York County Airport, said meteorologist Chris Horne of the National Weather Service. Before wind gusts slowed to 20 mph about three hours later, around 4,500 York County households were left in the dark.
Nearly 1,500 Duke Energy customers were without power at 7 p.m., said Richard Jiran, business relations executive for the company. The biggest outages were just outside Rock Hill city limits off S.C. 5 and S.C. 161. Scattered outages also left some Lake Wylie customers in the dark. In all, 59,000 Duke Energy customers across the Carolinas were without power, Jiran said.
"This has been a very significant wind storm," Jiran said. "We will be working around the clock until all power is restored."
Some 2,500 York Electric Cooperative customers were without electricity around 4 p.m. That number was down to 300 two hours later, said spokesman Marc Howie. Scattered outages remained as late as 7:30 p.m., he said.
Toppled trees atop power lines resulted in limited outages for about 500 city of Rock Hill utility customers, said city spokeswoman Lyn Garris. Affected areas included Fairlawn Court, Grady Drive, the Country Club area and Porter Road. Some customers were affected near York Technical College, she said.
City officials planned to restore all power before daybreak today, she said.
Today's forecast calls for cooler weather with high temperatures in the 50s and a slight chance for a passing shower this morning.
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