00:00She joins us from Pineville, North Carolina. Leslie, what a sight behind you.
00:06Hey, good morning, Ari. Yeah, you know, so we're just outside of Charlotte, just a couple of
00:11minutes of this very small town of Pineville. So as you can see, this is really an incredible
00:17video picture here of what happened yesterday. So here in Pineville, there was a water main break.
00:23And of course, it was in the 20s all day yesterday. So icicles quickly forming and staying
00:30here. And this has been the setup across many parts of Mecklenburg County, where we are still
00:37under extreme cold temperatures. We have seen some warming. So that's some good news. The roads
00:42this morning when I was out, very slushy because yesterday, again, most of our temperatures stayed
00:48hovered in the 20s. When that band of freezing rain came into the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area,
00:54we started to see a little bit of a thermal inversion. So we started in the 20s. And then
00:58we had a hard freezing rain for several hours, coated all the roads here, just impassable,
01:03couldn't get around. And then we started to see those temps go up to about 32. And that's where
01:08they stayed for a good portion of last night. Now, according to Duke Energy, which has over three
01:14and a half million customers here in North Carolina, they do have several thousand people
01:18still without power this morning. In Charlotte, we're doing okay. There's a couple hundred people
01:23that have no power this morning. But for the most part, this metro city fared well. There was a lot
01:29of concern from the 2002 ice storm that they had here. And that's when they really saw an incredible
01:36amount of ice accretion, about a half of an inch. And that shut down Metro Charlotte for up to
01:44two weeks in sub spots. There was widespread power outages. For the most part here in this part of
01:50North Carolina, the outages have been manageable. But the concern, of course, will be the very cold
01:57weather on the backside of the system. We're still anticipating very cold weather for the rest of
02:01today, not expected to get out of freezing temperatures in Charlotte. And then gradually warming
02:07by the end of the week with another system headed this way with possibly some precip as well, but
02:13not what we got over this weekend. Officially at the airport, they got about a quarter of an
02:20inch of freezing rain. And then they also saw about a quarter to a half of an inch of sleet. So
02:26that, you know, enough to cause some big problems for folks. But we talked to one bar owner here in
02:32the Pineville area late last night. He was the only place open. He decided to stay open so folks could
02:39get a break from this really rough weekend for a lot of folks that were sheltered in place. And by
02:44the way, schools are remote learning today here in Mecklenburg County. A lot of folks are urged to
02:49still stay off the roads. But here's what he had to say, why he stayed open, who has weathered not
02:54only winter storms, but also hurricanes. I didn't really have to open the store today.
03:00I was given that chance. But seeing how I live so close and the roads really aren't bad. I don't mind
03:08driving and stuff like this, even being from Florida. Some people, they need places to go and
03:15it wasn't a terrible hardship for me to open up.
03:18So we're still going to see that gradual thaw as we head through the next several days. But
03:25for today, it's kind of a transition day. Most places probably still going to remain closed here
03:30in Charlotte. For the most part, the crews here said things are manageable. And that's what they're
03:35hoping will continue to be the setup as we hopefully thaw out here in Charlotte soon. Reporting live on
03:40Leslie Hudson, back to you. All right. Thanks, Leslie. What a picture behind Leslie. I know I got to get
03:45myself to two bucks saloon.
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