Major storms
In 1989, the city took a direct hit from Hurricane Hugo. Passing through Charlotte with wind gusts over 160 km/h (100 mph), Hugo caused massive property damage and knocked out power to 98% of the population. Many residents were without power for several weeks and cleanup took months to complete. Being a city far inland, residents, city government and the utilities were not prepared to handle such a powerful hurricane. Over 80,000 trees were destroyed in Charlotte.
In December 2002, Charlotte (and much of central North Carolina) was hit by a massive ice storm that knocked out power to over 1.2 million Duke Power customers. According to a Duke Energy representative: "This ice storm surpasses the damage from Hurricane Hugo in 1989, which had 696,000 outages." During an abnormally cold December, many were without power for more than two weeks.
(Source: Wikipedia.org)
