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Police have identified the man killed in an overnight storm.

Donald Ray Needham, 51, of Jackson Springs, died after the truck he was in flipped over, said Greensboro police Capt. Janice Rogers. Authorities believe Needham was asleep in the truck when the storm hit. The truck was found at 8717 W. Market St., Rogers said.

The National Weather Service reported preliminary indications that the Greensboro tornado late Thursday night clocked in as a category EF2 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, meaning the funnel was packing winds between 111 and 135 mph.

"We really kind of dodged a bullet," Greensboro Assistant Fire Chief David Douglas said at a 11 a.m. news conference. "It came in late in the evening when most of you had already gone home, our traffic volume was low. Our occupancy in the buildings were low. This could have easily skipped over the airport, landed around Chance Road, Horsepen Creek Road and then we're into a high density residential area and it could have been much worse than it was."

One person was killed and three others suffered non-life threatening injuries after at least one tornado touched down near Interstate 40 and Sandy Ridge Road late Thursday night, damaging nearby homes and about a half-dozen businesses.

At the press conference, Alan Perdue, emergency services director for Guilford County, said officials were not sure whether there may have been two separate tornadoes or one that lifted and came back down.

"We're very fortunate," Perdue said. "It's a tragedy that we had any life lost, but considering the magnitude of the storm when you look at the aerial shots of this area and the damage that has been here, it's significant."

Much of the commercial and industrial area in Guilford County around U.S. 421, Interstate 40, N.C. 68 and Sandy Ridge Road remains closed to the public.

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The storm also knocked down a wall at a distributing business, sending one person to the hospital, Perdue said. Two others were hurt after their vehicles overturned.

One person was taken to the hospital while the other was treated at the scene, he said.

City Manager Mitchell Johnson toured the heavily damaged area southwest of Piedmont Triad International Airport with a police escort Friday morning.

"It's like a bushwhacker went through there and took the trees out," Johnson said.

Cars were also flipped over in the parking lot of a Coca-Cola distribution plant.

"It's like they came out of the sky and landed on the parking lot," he said.

Police are planning to provide limited access for business owners who have businesses in the affected areas beginning at 11:30 a.m. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who already was scheduled to be in Greensboro, was to tour the storm area Friday evening.

The Piedmont Triad Farmers Market will be open for business Saturday. The farmers and retail buildings, plus A.B. Seed Inc., Super Sod and the Moose Cafe, will be open their normal hours, said market manager Rick Cecil.

The N.C. CASI Chili Championship also will go on at the market as scheduled. The event will benefit the Epilepsy Medication Fund.

A portion of that Building No. 1 is closed to the public, and five affected vendors will be relocated to other areas of the market until repairs can be made, he said.

Julia Jarema, a spokeswoman with the North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, said the storm blew three tractor-trailers off Interstate 40.

At least one medium sized cargo truck was seen turned on its side and several cargo trailers tipped against each other behind one warehouse there.

Trees and several utility poles were snapped apart and toppled into the streets all over the area.

Witnesses on I-40 at the Sandy Ridge Road exit reported seeing a funnel cloud cross the road around 11:30 p.m.

Bob Young was asleep in the camper of his tractor trailer, parked at a Citgo truck stop on the Sandy Ridge Road exit when the tornado hit. Young was heading back to Canonsburg, Pa., a day early after making deliveries in Raleigh and Fayetteville. He said the lightning and high winds woke him up.

"All of a sudden something didn't sound right and I got up and the canopy was knocked over," he said.

High winds bent a metal canopy over onto itself. The canopy was covering at least eight diesel fuel pumps and crushed most of a wooden service island. The canopy and fuel pumps were only about 18 yards from Young's tractor trailer.

Young wasn't alone in the lot. There were seven other tractor trailers idling with drivers inside.

Jeremy Manuel's three-month-old truck sat under a tree at 8504 Farrington Road, where church members David Vaughn and Gene Blankenship were helping to remove the tree.

"The roar was so loud we didn't hear the trees fall," said his mother, Susie Manuel.

Ruth Holt's home at 3210 Sandy Ridge Road was hit by a tree. Though she was not home, her son Garland Holt rode out the storm in his trailer behind the house.

"The trailer got to rocking," Holt said. "I'll never forget that sound as long as I live."

Emergency officials also reported structural collapses in Forsyth and Davie counties. It wasn't known what kind of buildings were damaged.

Central and western North Carolina bore the brunt of the severe weather. Gov. Mike Easley today has also dispatched damage assessment teams comprised of state and local officials to Guilford, Forsyth, and Davie counties.

More than 1,000 customers in Guilford County remained without power as of 11:30 a.m. Friday, said Davis Montgomery, an official with Duke Energy.

Power is expected to be fully restored by midnight Friday, he said.

The power outage resulted from a series of large, 70-foot poles being knocked down, he said.

Elsewhere, more than 2,000 customers in Forsyth County were without power while Davie County west of Forsyth had nearly 8,000 customers without power.

"In the 20 years that I've been here in the Triad, this is some of the most intense and worst severe weather that we've had locally in our part of the Piedmont," Ed Matthews, WFMY News 2 meteorologist, told his viewers Friday morning.

Reports of house damage, fallen trees, flooding and road accidents came in from Surry, Guilford and Davie counties. The weather service issued tornado and flash-flood warnings between 8 p.m. and midnight for several counties.

In Clemmons, at least two houses off Frye Bridge Road collapsed, probably because of high winds, said Dan Ozimek, the director of the Forsyth County Emergency Medical Services, in an interview with the Winston-Salem Journal.

Portions of north-central North Carolina had been under a tornado watch from Thursday afternoon into early Friday morning. That watch has been canceled.

At a press conference Friday morning, Douglas said a commercial and industrial area in Guilford County around U.S. 421, Interstate 40, N.C. 68 and Sandy Ridge Road has been quarantined, meaning no traffic or employees will be allowed in that area.

West Market Street was also closed in that area.

Search and rescue teams, inspections and engineering crews are doing damage assessment and evaluating each building to ensure no one was left behind, Douglas said.

Greensboro police set up a command post at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market for those with questions including property owners and employees.

Guilford County commissioners seem to know mostly only what they're being told about the damage from last night's storms.

Chairman Kirk Perkins said that he and three other commissioners left the GTCC graduation Thursday and watched lightning sear the night sky.

"Considering what happened, it could've been a lot worse," Perkins said, acknowledging the reported death and several injuries that occurred as a result of the storm. "With those winds, there could've been more damage."

According to County Manager David McNeill, Perkins said, the situation is under control.

"We have an emergency response team that sets up and works with city of Greensboro," Perkins said.

The airport, where a twister is said to have touched down, is in Commissioner Linda Shaw's district. She said that she didn't see any damage in her neighborhood, but was in contact with Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes this morning about a family member who lives near Sandy Ridge Road.

"I was more concerned with (Shaw's husband) Bob's daughter because we couldn't reach her," Shaw said.

The commissioner tried to make it into the neighborhoods and airport to see the carnage this morning, but was blocked.

"I haven't seen the worst part because they have the roads closed," she said.