Storm Helene downs trees and power lines

Tropical storm Helene hit Rowan County and much of western North Carolina Friday morning with a one-two punch, starting in the early hours before dawn with rain and wind and rounding with a second hit about 9 a.m.

Local streets were subject to flash flooding and as of noon, there were still about 13,000 without power in the county. But by just after noon, Rowan County emergency services said they were coming out of storm emergency mode and returning to routine communications.

Throughout the morning there were numerous calls for trees down, blocking roads, and in numerous cases, taking power lines with them. Duke Power was working to keep up with reported outages and most of the impact was in the western part of the state. Spencer and East Spencer did have some outages, but the bulk was in Salisbury and northwest.

A tornado watch remained in effect until 6 p.m. Friday but winds and rain died down to sporadic effects by 1 p.m.

The city does have a real-time map of street closures and traffic light outages on its website that the public can access at https://salisburync.gov/Government/Fire/Severe-Weather .

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