UPDATED 1:10 p.m.
Late Friday afternoon, a line of strong thunderstorms moved across the Charlotte area leaving behind toppled trees and widespread power outages.
The National Weather Service in Greenvile, South Carolina, reports the storms moved across North and South Carolina with winds up to 70 miles per hour. One tornado touched down in northeast Cherokee County near Blacksburg, South Carolina, the weather service has confirmed.
After several days of rain, trees in the saturated ground were vulnerable to the high winds. The storm knocked down some of the large, older trees in the southeast Charlotte neighborhoods of Elizabeth and Myers Park.
By late morning Saturday, Duke Energy reports 30,941 customers in North Carolina are without power and in South Carolina 11,651. Most of the North Carolina customers without power are in Mecklenburg County, where there are 21,880 outages. York and Chester counties in South Carolina have a total of 3,366 outages.