Among the scattered storms that occurred Saturday night was one that ripped down two power poles, taking out power around Kinston High School.
Rhonda Barwick, director of Kinston Public Services, said the city received a call about a power outage near the high school, including Greenmead Drive and Cunningham Road.
“When crews arrived,” she said, “there were two poles that were damaged.”
Jerri King, deputy director of Emergency Services, said Saturday evening, “A few power lines were knocked down by the storm.”
Arching was reported over the emergency scanner as coming from a couple of the lines.
Barwick said the “quick storm” damaged one pole at the bottom, while another pole broke off about 15 feet from the top and was lying in an area of trees.
Circuit 522, which serves as many as 600 customers, was damaged, she said.
“Within an hour,” Barwick said, “about 95 percent of those that were out of power were back on.”
Crews had isolated the outage to about 75 customers in the vicinity of the high school to work on the poles, she said.
At 8:47 p.m., the National Weather Service in Newport issued a weather statement about storms passing through several counties, including Lenoir, Jones, Greene, Duplin and Onslow.
A spokesman for the NWS said he wasn’t aware of the high winds in Kinston because the airport reading picked up just 7-miles-per-hour winds.
He said isolated winds must have exceeded 30 miles per hour to bring down poles or lightning could have caused damage to the poles.
Following that statement, the NWS issued another statement announcing more strong thunderstorms storms would be passing through Arba, Institute, La Grange, Dawson, Faison and Falling Creek that could cause pea-sized hail and wind gusts up to 40 miles per hour. The storm reached from Jason down to Mount Olive until about 11 p.m.
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.