News

Thunderstorms with high winds and hail whack county

By Bill Moss, Published: May 8, 2024

Bands of thunderstorms packing winds as high as 50 mph and heavy hail roared through Henderson County Wednesday afternoon, and another band of storms developing in Tennessee brought more of the same overnight.

Although the National Weather Service said it had no reports of a tornado, there were numerous reports of high wind and "some prety big hail," NWS meteorologist Patrick Moore said around 4:30 p.m. "We don't have a lot of observations that have actual wind gust (speeds). I know we had a report of 51 mph at Asheville airport at 1:54 p.m.

"I think most of it has moved out," Henderson County Emergency Services Director Jimmy Brissie said at 4:30 p.m. "It seems like most of the damage has been out towards Edneyville. Collectively, the fire departments have run probably up to 25 calls now related to the storm — mostly trees down, power  lines down. We had two reports of structures that had trees on them, no injuries reported." A motorcycle crash was thought to have been atrributable to the heavy weather as well.

Although people were reporting high winds and heavy damage, Brissie, like the National Weather Service, said there was no evidence of a tornado.

"There's no indication of that at this time," he said. "That would be a question for the National Weather Service. They'll have to go back and make an assessment but the indications are it's just straight-line winds."

Fire departments busiest with storm-related calls were Hendersonville, Edneyville and Mountain Home.

Edneyville Fire & Rescue responded to 10 calls of trees/power lines down, a tree on a house and one motor vehicle crash between 2 and 3:30 in the area between Pace Road and Jaymar Drive, the department said in Facebook post.

Duke Energy reported 272 power outages in Henderson County — 140 in Edneyville and 97 in Hendersonville — 1,179 in Buncombe and 803 in the Chimney Rock-Lake Lure area.

The heavy rainstorms also forced cancellation of the Bearfootin' Bear Reveal downtown.

"We will not be rescheduling the event, and instead the bears will be on the street tomorrow morning," Downtown Manager Jamie Carpenter said at 3:30. "Stay tuned to our social media pages for features on each bear in the next couple of weeks with a virtual feature in lieu of the reveal."