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LIGHTNING PHOTOS: Thunderstorm roars through Valley Hill, toppling trees and power lines

Two large trees were snapped in half by Saturday night's storm.

By Lightning Reports, Published: July 30, 2023

A severe thunderstorm that roared through southern Henderson County Saturday evening toppled giant trees, causing down power lines and closing roads from the Kanuga area to the Hendersonville Country Club.

At 2:15 p.m. on Sunday, 2,290 customers remained without power in Henderson County. By 4 p.m., the number of outages had dropped to 1,169.

“We had multiple trees and powerlines down. We had several trees strike homes, cars,” Valley Hill Fire & Rescue Chief Tim Garren said Sunday afternoon. “To me, it almost looks like it kind of started right around the Country Club and the lower part of Laurel Park and then went across to Old Kanuga, Kanuga Road and Crooked Creek, and that was kind of the extent of it. If you go on out Kanuga, once you hit Beaumont Estates it pretty much stopped right there.” Garren had heard no reports of fatalities or injuries as a result of the storm.

The storm formed in Tennessee and gained power as it moved south into North Carolina.

“It was a little bit more than normal because of there was a bit of organization," said Rodney Simpson, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Greer, S.C. "A line of storms came out of Tennessee and across the mountains and made a whole swath of trees down across the mountains and down into the Upstate. It was what we call more organized than normal. It wasn’t just pop-up storms. It was able to maintain itself across that area down into the Upstate."

Although the power of the storm, the high winds and extent of damage led people to speculate that it was a tornado, Simpson said the weather service has no measurements to support that.

In Crooked Creek, at the corner of Crooked Creek and Hudson roads, the powerful storm uprooted a large hardwood in Joan Carter's yard, causing it to fall across Hudson Road onto the garage of her neighbor, Cliff Capps.

“There’s stuff that flew everywhere,” Carter said as she looked at a large root ball jutting out of the ground. “For that to be ripped up out of the ground — the amount of power that has to do that.”

Both Carter and Capps were away from home when the storm hit but arrived soon after.

“We were coming back in and she called me as I was coming down the road and when I saw it I thought this cannot be good,” Capps said. “The Rescue Squad came out last night and they jumped on that and put that tarp on it for me. They did a good job. I was very thankful for those boys last night, and girls. There was a girl working just as hard as the guys.”

Hendersonville Country Club's golf course sustained heavy damage, with close to 20 large trees left lying across fairways and greens. There were no players; the course is closed for now.