High winds leave thousands without power in Guilford County, Forsyth too

High winds knocked out power to about 6,700 Duke Energy customers across Guilford County and left more than 16,000 without electricity in Forsyth County, with outages stretching from Greensboro and Jamestown into High Point. Duke Energy had relocated crews from other areas and was working to restore service by 7:45 p.m. as wind damage spread across the Triad.

In Guilford County, the outage map showed impacts along Wendover Avenue, Piedmont Parkway, Hilltop Road, Tarrant Road, Guilford College Road and NC 68. The losses reached parts of Greensboro, Jamestown and High Point, turning a weather burst into a service problem for homes, stores and traffic-heavy corridors that depend on steady power.

WXII 12 News and Weather showed how quickly the storm turned hazardous, reporting an uprooted tree crashing onto a car in a Greensboro driveway during the same round of severe weather. In Forsyth County, high winds brought down trees and damaged power lines, a familiar kind of failure in storms that move fast but leave behind tangled limbs, dark intersections and damaged equipment.

For residents, the disruption went far beyond a dark house. Outages during the hottest weeks of the year can cut air conditioning when people need it most, and they can also interrupt fans, medical devices, work-from-home schedules and refrigerated food. Businesses along the affected corridors have to decide whether to stay open on backup power, close early or send workers home while traffic signals and nearby service keeps flickering back and forth.

The Triad has seen this pattern before. Another Jamestown-area outage left more than 2,300 customers without power, and local storm coverage has repeatedly tied wind damage to falling trees and downed lines. The Guilford County outage fit that same pattern, with the Duke Energy map serving as the live guide for where crews were focused and when service was expected to return.

As crews cleared debris and checked damaged lines, the outage ripple reached well beyond the neighborhoods listed on the map. A brief wind event can still trigger hours of repairs, and in Guilford County that means the hardest work often begins after the storm has already moved on.