Last Updated on December 23, 2012 3:56 pm
The second winter storm of the season passed through the High Country over the weekend.
Snow began to fall overnight Thursday night/Friday early morning, and power outages starting becoming an issue.
The first report of snowing sticking came into the facebook page Thursday night “Snowing/sleeting on Junaluska Rd….sure is coming down and sticking too! Deck is covered within 5 minutes!”. First power outage report came in “ power went out at about 2am in Foscoe near Grandfather Mountain Campground, and was out for almost an hour”. A twitter report came in around 3am “Power outages increasing in mountains and 39% of peeps in Avery County have no power. Much along watauga/Avery line”.
At the peak of the weekend outages 2,400 Blue Ridge Electric members were not able to turn the lights on. On Saturday morning Progress Energy reported 1374 customers in Avery County without power.
Howling winds caught everyone’s attention. A peak gust in Boone of 70mph was recorded Friday night at 7:35pm. Other gust of note was 67 on Thursday and Saturday in Boone. By far the most notable is the 121mph mark recorded on Grandfather Mountain Friday night just after 10pm. In Ashe County a 77mph gust was recorded at Ashe County Airport at 10:35pm.
Roads started becoming slick in the 6am hour Friday, along with an increase of reports about trees coming down across roads and power lines.
Snowfall stopped early Saturday morning leading to improved road conditions by mid morning, but winds continued to gust until late in the day. Because of the high winds accurate snowfall measurements are harder to come by. From data sent into the National Weather Service it appears that about 2 inches fell in the lower elevations during the entire event.
Check out the December photo page for a look at the snow. Also check out the pages for Friday and Saturday for more pictures and videos.
