UPDATE: Less than 1,000 Progress Energy customers remain without power this morning, April 5, in the Asheville area. Further east, Duke Energy reported that more than 250,000 customers were without power as of 6:20 a.m. Severe thunderstorms swept through the area Monday night, and crews are assessing the damage.
APRIL 4: Over 11,000 households were without power after severe thunderstorms swept through the area Monday night, according to Progress Energy. While crews had restored power in some areas, some of the damage was still being assessed early Tuesday morning.
Image taken from Progress Energy outage map
To the east of Asheville, there was a swath of outages beginning in the Oakley and Haw Creek areas and extending east into Oteen and Swannanoa. In the west, outages began near Patton Avenue and stretched up through Deaver View and into Leicester. Downtown, along with North and South Asheville, saw relatively few outages by comparison. Around midnight, over 11,000 households were without power.
By 1 a.m., as the storms headed east out of the area, some power was restored in the Deaverview and Oakley areas, while the National Weather Service downgraded the severe thunderstorm warning to a watch, though a wind advisory remains in effect.
However, Asheville isn’t entirely out of the woods yet, as forecasts call for cold weather ahead, with possible flurries in the morning and temperatures hovering around freezing Tuesday night.
— David Forbes, senior news reporter
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