SALISBURY - Rowan Public Library offers free, monthly computer classes on beginning to advanced topics.  Classes are hands-on and are free and open to the public.  All classes are approximately 90 minutes long. 

This month’s class will be Blogging for Beginners and will cover basics on how to set up a web blog (type of website) where you can post photos, share recipes, and keep notes of your favorite travels this summer.  This class will be offered at all three branches of the Rowan Public Library:

South Rowan Regional (China Grove): Monday, June 17, 2013, 7:00 pm

East Branch (Rockwell): Tuesday, June 18, 2013, 1:00 pm

Headquarters (Salisbury): Thursday, June 20, 2013, 9:30 am

Registration is required for the class offered at the East Branch.  For more information or to register, please call 704-216-8229.

Those strong storms brought trees down all over our area, even on some local interstates. One group of family and friends had an encounter with a tree that was a little too close for comfort.

The story starts with this battered Honda Pilot, and what should have been a routine trip home from Walmart on I-40 west of Statesville.

"The storm was coming in, it was just starting to rain, just starting to blow," said Rick Davis, who was behind the wheel. "The next thing you know a tree came down on top of us."

"It was like a bomb went off," said Sharon Clothier, sitting in the back seat on the passenger side. Her elderly mother was sitting right beside her. The group was traveling west on I-40 near Stamey Farm Road when the big tree came crashing down.

"It crashed so hard it just bottomed the car out on the shocks, the whole load just bottomed the car out," Davis added.

SALISBURY -  In Rowan and Cabarrus Counties the storm came up quickly, ripping down power lines, pulling massive trees from the ground and slamming them down on to houses.

Even with a lot of warning about this storm, it's hard to prepare for something so powerful, as one homeowner just off Airport Road discovered.

"A massive wind come up I've never seen anything like it in my life," Rick Coughenour told WBTV.  "And it seemed like it centered on my property."

Coughenour was just watching the wind from his front porch, then he turned to walk inside.

"I walked in the house and there was insulation everywhere," Coughenour said, pointing out the piles of white insulation that lined the hallway and littered the floor of his Hickory Lane home.