By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
Staff Writer
Freakish winds spawned by a mammoth coastal storm battered Beaufort County on Wednesday, knocking down tree limbs and causing scattered power outages.
“We’ve got an area of low pressure that’s intensifying very rapidly to the north up along the Mid-Atlantic coast,” said Tom Kines, a meteorologist with private forecaster AccuWeather. “That rapid intensification is causing a lot of wind not only in your neck of the woods, but all the way up into southern New England.”
At 1:22 p.m., the wind was sustained at 20 mph, gusting to 39 mph at Warren Field Airport, the National Weather Service’s Web site showed.
By mid-morning, gusts reached 51 mph at Swan Quarter and 55 mph at the Piney Island Bombing Range, the weather service said.
Tideland Electric Membership Corp. reported fewer than 1,400 outages in Beaufort County. Around 1,150 customers in the Edward-Blounts Creek area lost power for about an hour, said Heidi Smith, spokeswoman for Tideland.
Tideland crews reported limbs down throughout the county, but no fallen trees, she said by late afternoon.
“I think we’ve been a little surprised that we haven’t had more root systems giving way with the combination of the wind and the wet ground,” Smith commented.
Progress Energy Carolinas said 870 customers lost power in Beaufort County after a tree fell on a power line, said spokesman Jeff Brooks.
About 370 of those customers were in Aurora, Brooks related.
“We’ve had outages all over the Carolinas,” he said.
Attempts to determine whether Washington Electric Utilities customers experienced outages proved unsuccessful.
A tree fell across N.C. Highway 33 east of Chocowinity, said John Pack, Beaufort County’s emergency management coordinator.
The tree took out cable and telephone lines, but didn’t disrupt electricity, Pack said.
The Chocowinity Volunteer Fire Department cleared the tree from the highway in about 30 minutes, he said.
With wind gusts expected to climb to 45 mph by midday, Pack advised all fire-rescue officials driving high-profile vehicles to use caution.
“Our magic number for emergency response vehicles is when it hits 45 mph we have to really slow down and be careful,” he said.
The ground was saturated because of recent heavy rains, Pack said, adding that falling trees were a possibility.
He said no significant problems had been reported as a result of the winds.
A late-morning trip to the Washington waterfront revealed a fast-moving Pamlico River that was being pushed out by the brisk westerly blow.
River levels were expected to fall 2 to 3 feet below normal during the wind event, the National Weather Service said.
The N.C. Department of Transportation’s Ferry Division suspended ferry runs at Swan Quarter, Ocracoke, Cedar Island and in the Pamlico River.
In a news release, the ferry division said sustained winds of 40 mph and gusts to 60 mph had made it unsafe for ferry runs to continue.
“Operations could be suspended through (Thursday) morning, depending on the severity of the wind speeds,” the release reads.
For more information on ferry schedules, call 1-800-BY-FERRY or visit www.ncferry.org.
Community Editor Greg Katski contributed to this report.