The storm brought swirling winds topping 60 mph, torrential downpours and some hail.
“It was a pretty brutal storm,” said Progress Energy Community Relations Manager Andy Honeycutt. “In some places we had broken poles and downed trees.”
The storm capped what was a busy Easter weekend for emergency workers. A large forest fire broke out on Saturday near Addor and threatened several homes.
The storm formed over Montgomery County and moved across the state in a southern and then southeastern direction. It affected parts of five counties and held together for several hours.
Moore County was under a thunderstorm warning from 2:41 p.m. to 3:45 p.m., according to National Weather Service Meteorologist Brandon Vincent.
A warning issued at 3:11 p.m. specifically mentioned Southern Pines, Pinehurst, Aberdeen and Vass as towns in the path of the storm.
When it first formed, meteorologists warned of large hail, Vincent said. By the time it had made its way to southern Moore County, it had become more of a danger because of high winds.
A gauge in Fayetteville measured gusts of up to 64 mph.
“It was a very bad storm,” Vincent said.
The storm formed when an upper atmosphere low-pressure system rotating through southern Virginia collided with a surface low that had been crawling in from Kentucky and another surface front that had been lying across North Carolina.
On the south side of that front, the temperatures reached as high as 90 degrees. Once the storm started to form, it gained strength from the heat, Vincent said.
“A lot of factors had to come together right,” he said.
The majority of the people who lost power were in the Pinehurst area, but outages occurred all over the county.
Progress Energy crews worked throughout the afternoon and evening to restore power. Most people lost power around 3:15 p.m. and had it restored by 4:30 p.m., Honeycutt said.
“The majority were back on within an hour and a half to two hours,” he said.
Other customers who were on secondary lines were without power longer, Honeycutt said.
Scot Brooks, director of public safety for Moore County, said trees were downed all over the county. One fell on a home in Southern Pines. The county worked with the N.C. Department of Transportation to keep roads clear and clean up storm debris.
Other than that, county emergency management officials just tried to keep an eye on the storm.
“We watched it and prayed,” Brooks said.
Several traffic accidents were blamed on the heavy rain. No one was seriously injured, Brooks said. A fire broke out in Robbins on a power line and pole, he said. But that was about it, in terms of storm damage.
The forest fire burned 182 acres of wilderness between Addor Road and U.S. 15-501. The fire could have been extremely dangerous to residences if it had managed to cross the highway, said Billie Lewis, assistant county ranger the Moore County offices of the North Carolina Forestry Service.
If it had crossed over “it would probably have burned a bunch of homes,” Lewis said.
As it was, firefighters had to dig in and work to protect between four and five homes that were in the path of the fire.
More that 21 agencies and 50 fire units were involved in battling the blaze.
The fire started, as is most often the case, from a debris fire. All 17 fire departments in Moore County responded to the scene as did one from Hoke County.
The state allocated a scout plane, a helicopter and an air tanker capable of dumping 1,500 gallons of water to fight the blaze. The tanker picked up water from Lake Pinehurst and dumped it on the fire.
“That was the one that saved us,” Lewis said.
The plane arrived just as the fire was threatening to move across the highway, he said. It cooled down the fire enough for tractors to get in and cut a fire break.
The tanker had been at a fire in Wilkes County and cleared just in time to make it here. It arrived between 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., Lewis said.
Workers had already been fighting the fire for about two hours. They wound up being on the scene until about 6:30 p.m. or 7 p.m., Lewis said. Firefighters returned to the scene Sunday when the blaze reignited.
In total, 12 homes had to be evacuated. Between 80 to 100 volunteer firefighters responded.
“From all of us, we especially want to be thanking the fire departments, the (State) Highway Patrol, Aberdeen Rescue, the Moore County Sheriff’s Department and the Moore County Fire Marshal’s Office,” Lewis said. “It takes a group effort to control a fire like this.”
The Forestry Service had several reported fires over the weekend that burned about a total of 200 acres, Lewis said.
Brooks said that the success against the large Saturday fire was due to the efforts of all who were on the scene. There were 33 total pieces of Moore County equipment called to the fire.
“If they hadn’t acted quickly we could have had a real mess,” Brooks said.
Matthew Moriarty may be reached at 693-2479 or by e-mail at moriarty@thepilot.com.
