Storms knock dozens of trees onto homes, cars in Salisbury

SALISBURY, N.C. — A line of storms Monday rolled through the Salisbury area, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

Channel 9′s Austin Chaney said the damage came from straight-line winds.

The damage in Salisbury has to be some of the worst non-tornado wind damage that I’ve ever come across. Not everyone saw storms yesterday, but the ones that formed were powerful pic.twitter.com/AYdz37ta51
— Meteorologist Austin Chaney WSOC (@AChaneyWSOC) June 27, 2023

Chopper 9 Skyzoom flew over the storm damage Tuesday afternoon. Dozens of trees were uprooted and many had landed on cars and homes in the area. The crux of the damage appeared to be on Ellis Street and Lee Street, near downtown Salisbury.

Crews were out at a home that had suffered severe damage from a large tree that had toppled onto it.

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Another tree was uprooted and fell across another home, damaging part of it. The home, which is for sale, didn’t appear to have anyone to have anyone inside at the time of the storm.

The wind took down several strong, mature trees. One neighbor described to Chaney what it was all like.

“My wife and I went into our basement -- peaked out visibility was really low, and we saw a large tree come down in our driveway, and I didn’t see anything after that,” Sean Cooper said.

VIDEO: Residents escape harm during severe storms

Residents escape harm during severe storms

Outages

At least 3,000 people were without power Monday evening near Salisbury, and more outages were reported by Tuesday.

The outages began just before 9 p.m., according to the Duke Energy outage map. Channel 9 Reporter Joe Bruno saw several intersections didn’t have functioning traffic lights.

If you approach an intersection with a traffic light that isn’t working, you are supposed to treat the intersection as a four-way stop.

By 10:30 p.m., Duke Energy’s outage map showed 3,000 people around Salisbury without power, and nearly 1,000 more people near Kannapolis were in the same situation.

At 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, the same outage map showed a new power outage for 2,000 people.

Stay away from any downed power lines or tall trees near power lines.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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