Bracing for
Tornadoes in 14 States as Homes Are Destroyed and Power Lines Fall
June 24, 2015
(Reuters)
Powerful thunderstorms packing heavy rain and high winds lashed the U.S.
Middle Atlantic region late on Tuesday, killing one person, snarling travel and
cutting off power to hundreds of thousands of customers.
The fast-moving band
of storms stretching from Virginia to southern New Jersey dumped up to one inch
(2.5 cm) of rain in less than an hour in some places, said Jim Hayes, a
National Weather Service meteorologist in College Park, Maryland.
"The storms
were intense but they were moving pretty quickly," he said.
Police in Montgomery
County, Maryland said a 79-year-old man died after his pickup truck hit a tree
that had fallen across the roadway, about 30 miles (48 km) north of Washington
D.C.
Private forecaster
AccuWeather said the storms would reach into northern New England through the
evening as a cold front intersected with hot and humid air.
Winds of up to 70
miles per hour (113 kph) were recorded in southern New Jersey, and the line of
storms stretched westward into West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
About 74,000 homes
and businesses were without power in northern Virginia and in the Washington
and Baltimore areas, power companies reported.
About 82,000 New
Jersey customers of PSEG power company were without electricity, and more than
400,000 homes and businesses in the Philadelphia area were dark.
The bad weather
prompted Amtrak, the U.S. passenger rail service, to suspend services between
Washington, Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for about an hour.
Flightaware.com,
which tracks airline flights, said more than 200 were delayed or canceled at
each of New York's LaGuardia, Newark's Liberty International and Philadelphia
International airports.