Tornadoes, hail and lightning: powerful storms hit the east of the USA

In the early hours of August 8, nearly 400 homes and businesses were left without power as severe thunderstorms hit much of the eastern United States. As a result, at least two people died, infrastructure was damaged, and dozens of people were stuck on a road in Maryland, reports CNN.

Photo: IStock

In Westminster, Maryland, on August 7, dozens of people were locked in vehicles for up to five and a half hours after severe weather brought down power lines on cars on Route 140.

Drivers waited for hours while brigades de-energized power lines. Police said 33 adults and 14 children were eventually rescued, with no injuries.

Jeffrey Campbell was returning home from work when a power pole collapsed in front of him. He was trapped for several hours with live wires lying on the ground on either side of his truck. According to him, the wire to his right severed the outside mirror.
“It was just pillars falling one after the other,” he said.

Casualties

Authorities said the storm on August 7 killed at least two people. A 28-year-old man was struck by lightning in a parking lot in Florence, Alabama.

Evan Christopher Kinley, 15, died in South Carolina. A tree near his grandparents' home in Anderson County fell on the boy due to high winds and rain.

Many people from Alabama to Pennsylvania were left without electricity in the early hours of August 8th.

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More than 140 utility customers were left without power in North Carolina, while there were more than 000 outages in Pennsylvania, according to PowerOutage.us. Maryland and Georgia also reported more than 103 and 000 outages, respectively.

Video from across the country shows downed trees and power lines, as well as damaged structures, including in Paoli, Indiana, where strong winds ripped roofs off buildings, bent road signs and scattered debris on August 7.

The storm also damaged an apartment complex in Knoxville, Tennessee, where roofs were blown off houses.

Tornado and hail

On August 7, more than 40 million people from south New York to Tennessee were under a tornado warning.

At least one tornado was confirmed just after 17:30 pm in the village of McGraw, about 48 miles south of Syracuse, New York.

The weather service said mobile homes in the village of about 1000 were likely to be "damaged or destroyed."

The extent of the damage was not immediately clear.

Severe storms also hit the Midwest in the early hours of August 7th. The inspection revealed EF-1 tornado damage in Dubois and Orange counties in Indiana on August 7th.

It is not known if the damage was caused by a single, longer tornado or multiple tornadoes, according to the weather service.

There have been numerous hail reports of 5 cm or more in Virginia, including one report of grapefruit-sized hail (12 cm) in Caroline County, according to the Storm Prediction Center. According to the National Weather Service in Wakefield, Virginia, this is the largest hailstorm recorded in the state of Virginia since 2002.

Flight cancellations and delays

Storms also disrupted traffic. On August 7, more than 8600 flights were delayed and more than 1700 were canceled, according to FlightAware.com. As of August 8, over 300 flights have been canceled and over 600 delayed.

Ground delays were in place at nine major airports on August 7, including Atlanta, Charlotte, three major New York airports, three major airports in Washington, DC, and Philadelphia International Airport. Ground delays mean that aircraft bound for these airports had to be delayed at their origins.

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Heavy rain could still hit upstate New York and upstate New England, according to the National Weather Service.

A small risk of severe thunderstorms on August 8 - Level 2 of 5 - exists in parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, as well as parts of Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas, the Storm Prediction Center said.

U.S. government offices in the Washington, D.C. area closed early on August 7 due to threatening weather. Forecasters warned people in the eastern United States of possible tornadoes, destructive winds and large hail.

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Libraries, museums, the National Zoo, swimming pools and other municipal and federal services in the Washington area also closed early.

"I hear that something is coming"

On August 7, a state of emergency was declared in Paoli, Orange County, Indiana due to the hurricane. Officials have warned that it could take several days for power to be restored.

“This little town is basically destroyed,” said Jason Terrell, whose truck was smashed by several trees. “It’s just a lot of grief for Paoli.”

Another Paoli resident said he took shelter as the storm approached.

“I went out and the wind wasn’t strong, but I could hear something coming,” Peter Bostock said. “So this is the first time in my life that I’ve used a shelter.”

Bostok woke up on the morning of 7 August to find his yard littered with trees, some broken or uprooted.

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