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Confirmed tornado struck Rockingham County as storms crossed the Piedmont

On Friday, May 6, much of North Carolina and Virginia were under severe thunderstorm and tornado watches from the National Weather Service. Image courtesy of NWS via Twitter.

The National Weather Service has confirmed that a tornado struck Rockingham County during the storms that crossed the Triad Friday. 

The NWS office in Blacksburg, Virginia, says a survey team looked at storm damage in the area near Wentworth and concluded it was caused by a tornado with maximum speeds of 110 miles per hour.

It struck shortly before 8 p.m. and cut a swath nearly eight miles long, beginning in a forested area and ending near Business 29 northeast of  Reidsville.

At its peak, the twister was almost 300 yards wide.

No one was reported injured but there was some property damage. Several homes in the area were struck by fallen trees, and a barn also had roofing material blown off by high winds.

The weather agency credited Rockingham Emergency Services for their help surveying the damage.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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