Thunderstorm pelts area with marble-sized hail

Monday, March 30, 2009 3:06 AM  |  Printer friendly version | E-mail to a friend |

By Kathy Chaffin

kchaffin@salisburypost.com

An evening thunderstorm moved through Rowan County Tuesday, pelting some areas with marble-sized hail and leaving more than 2,000 Duke Energy customers without power.

A fallen tree limb near East Rowan High School took down some power lines, causing outages in that area.

According to the Duke Energy Web site, the largest outage was east of U.S. 52, with smaller outages reported in the southern end of the county and southwest of Salisbury.

In Granite Quarry, the owner of a house at 803 N. Main St. called the Rowan 911 Center at 8:54 p.m. reporting it had been struck by lightning. Deputy Chief Bill Fraley of the Granite Quarry Fire Department said the residents reported smelling smoke, "but by the time we arrived, it had dissipated."

Firefighters from the Salisbury, Faith and Rockwell City departments assisted in the call.

Fraley said he did not see any hail in Granite Quarry. There were some power outages on South Main Street, he said.

In Rockwell, Police Chief Hugh Bost said there hadn't been much damage there. "It seems like most of it is in Granite Quarry," he said.

A spokesperson for the Salisbury Police Department reported receiving several calls about burglar alarms going off during the storm, but noted that they had started before the storm ever got here.

The storm came through Salisbury around 7 with wind and rain turning to hail and back to rain before subsiding around 8:30.