Wednesday’s high winds gusted as high as 46 miles per hour at the Kinston airport at about 10 p.m., bringing tree limbs down and causing power outages, Meteorologist Hal Austin of the National Weather Service in Newport said.
“It was just a powerful cold front that moved through,” he said, “and moved off the coast this morning.”
Power was out in areas south of Kinston into Jones County, as well as in La Grange and scattered areas of Greene County. Officials in the three counties confirmed there were no major incidences.
Austin said power was out in the early morning hours around British Road near Jones County, and a tree was down on Brothers Road near La Grange.
“We just had some trees blown over and power outages,” Roger Dail, Lenoir County Emergency Management director, said.
A substation near Albertson in Duplin County was down from shortly after 9 p.m. until about 3 a.m. that affected Lenoir County residents, said Bob Kornegay, marketing and member services manager with Tri-County EMC.
“A tree went down on the line right at the substation,” Kornegay said, “and, in turn, it knocked out the substation.” It took several hours to bring it back up safely, he said.
Kornegay said about 300 of Tri-County’s customers in Lenoir and Wayne counties were without power. Other than the customers affected by the substation, the outages were mostly scattered, he said.
Jeff Brooks, spokesman for Progress Energy Carolinas, or Duke Energy, said 2,300 of the 11,500 customers in Lenoir County were without power.
Areas include about 1,800 customers around Kinston, including Central Avenue and Neuse Road. Power was out between about 1:45 a.m. and 2:30 a.m.
An outage occurred on U.S. 70 near the Baron and the Beef restaurant.
Other areas Brooks mentioned include a “handful” of customers in Pink Hill and Grifton, as well as a tree or limb that caused an outage around Clark Drive, King Heights Boulevard and Noland Street. The same incident caused about 150 outages in Jones County between 3:30 a.m. to shortly after 5 a.m.
“There were lots of scattered outages,” he said.
About 14 Duke customers in Jones County were without power between about 5:50 a.m. and 7:45 a.m. when a safety mechanism on a line tripped, likely due to debris on the line, Brooks said.
There were 375 of the 8,500 Greene County customers without power, Tammy Murphy, spokeswoman for Pitt and Greene EMC.
“One tree was down,” she said, “and the rest of it was limbs on the line. It blew pretty steady all night long.”
Greene’s Emergency Management director, Randy Skinner, said there were no reports of structural damage.
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.
