DANVILLE, Va. – The National Weather Service in Blacksburg is surveying the damage caused by high winds in the Westover Hills neighborhood Thursday evening.

Meteorologist Andrew Loconto says a preliminary analysis of radar and photographs from the scene indicates the damage was caused by straight line winds and not a tornado. He says the neighborhood was hit by “a line of storms.” He notes that “while you can certainly get some brief tornadoes with those, the most common source with that is more straight line wind damage.”

Loconto says if there is evidence of a tornado or if the city of Danville requests it, Blacksburg will send a team of forecasters to examine the damage and conduct an expert assessment.

Locanto said there have been no reports of injuries or fatalities associated with the violent thunderstorms, which he said stretched all the way to Lynchburg.

Storms knocked about power to about 5,000 Danville Utilities customers and downed numerous power poles and trees in the Westover Hills area. The same neighborhood was struck by a tornado in April 2018.

The number of outages had been reduced to 400 by daybreak.

(Photo: River City TV)