Thursday’s storms are expected to drop several inches of rain across central North Carolina. The biggest risk will be flooding, but areas west of the Triangle are already seeing power outages.
At 6:30 a.m., Duke Energy’s outage map showed around 2,000 customers without power in Durham and Chapel Hill. The pouring rain is starting to move into Raleigh.
At 6 a.m., more than 2,500 Chatham County customers were without power in Siler City, with outages extending up into Randolph County in Staley and Liberty. Many of the outages were caused by fallen trees or limbs damaging equipment. The estimated restoration time for that outage is as early as 7:45 a.m.
The High Point area is seeing more than 8,000 outages as of 6 a.m.
According to the National Weather Service in Raleigh, more than 6 inches of rain have fallen in High Point as of 5 a.m. on Thursday. Burlington, Greensboro and Winston-Salem have also seen several inches of rain.
A flood advisory is in effect Thursday morning for Wake, Durham, Chatham, Orange, Person and Granville counties, which means flooding is likely. WRAL meteorologist Elizabeth Gardner said between 1 and 3 inches of rain has already fallen in the Triad, and more rain is expected.
Track rain with the DualDoppler5000
WRAL meteorologists said bands of rain will slide southward throughout Thursday. Some of the heaviest rain has already fallen west of the Triangle, in Durham and Chatham counties.
Areas southeast of the Triangle like Smithfield and Goldsboro could see the worst flooding on Thursday. Download the WRAL Weather app to get alerts and find the latest weather updates here.
