Fierce winds lifted NC man into the air as he helped people trapped in a car, NWS says

Fierce winds during an intense thunderstorm lifted a North Carolina man into the air as he tried to rescue people trapped in a car Tuesday night, National Weather Service officials said.

The man broke his jaw and suffered a laceration when a toppling tree hit him as he went airborne in the small Gaston County city of Cherryville, according to a storm damage report by the NWS office in Greer, South Carolina.

Cherryville is 37 miles northwest of Charlotte. About 6,000 people live there.

Straight-line winds peaked at 85 mph during the supercell storm, the NWS team found. That’s similar in strength to an EF-0 tornado, the weakest classification on the NWS Enhanced Fujita Scale for tornado wind speed and damage.

Unlike tornadoes, straight-line thunderstorm winds have no rotation.

The storm moved into the Cherryville area just after 6:30 p.m., uprooting trees along N.C. 274 and ripping the roofs off a home and metal building in the Cherryville city limits, the team said.

A half-hour earlier, the NWS reported the “strong supercell thunderstorm” dumping hail possibly as large as golf balls in northern Cleveland County.

The storm traveled 4.8 miles in the Cherryville area, starting about 3 miles northwest of the city and the damage path ending 2 miles east of the community, the NWS reported .

Most of the damage occurred in the Cherryville city limits, mainly in the form of many uprooted trees, according to the survey team.

Most years see far more damage reports nationwide from straight-line winds than tornadoes, according to the NWS.

The winds form after a downburst of air during a storm, NWS officials say. Air dragged downward by rain or other precipitation in the storm then moves in a straight line once it hits the ground, according to the weather service.