Weather

Storms do little damage to Triangle; power outages top 98,000 across state at peak

Strong storms moved through the Triangle on Monday night, but severe weather largely stayed to the west of the region.

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RALEIGH, N.C. — At least 98,000 homes and businesses were without power across North Carolina at the outage's peak after a cold front on Monday triggered bands of strong storms that brought much-needed rain to the state.

Most of the power outages were concentrated to the western part of the state. Roughly 37,000 customers were in the dark around Hickory early Tuesday morning, according to the Duke Energy power outage map. Threats of severe weather and isolated tornadoes around the Triangle never fully materialized, though.

At times, the storms dumped up to 7 inches of rain per hour on parts of North Carolina, but most people around the central part of the state got half an inch to an inch and a half.

Strong winds caused power outages across the region, with more than 1,100 outages reported in Wake County at the peak of the storms, Duke Energy said.

"From a damage standpoint, this turned out ot be all potential and no bite," WRAL Chief Meteorologist Greg Fishel said. "It looks like we're going to get through this pretty much unscathed."

Tornado watches initially issued until 2 a.m. for much of central North Carolina expired in nearly all counties before midnight.

A mudslide was reported in Henderson County, leading to the closure of U.S. Highway 65 and power lines and trees were brought down across the western part of the state.

At least two school districts in the western part of the state opted to cancel classes Tuesday as a result of storm damage.

Temperatures will stay warm on Tuesday, in the low to mid 70s, under partly cloudy skies, before cooling off mid-week.

"Initially, it won't be that much cooler tomorrow than it was today and then substantial cooling will begin to move in Wednesday," Fishel said.

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