Severe storms cause lightning fires, widespread outages and more across the mid-Atlantic
Severe thunderstorms on Aug. 7 trapped dozens of people in Maryland, ignited fires in Pennsylvania, and left more than a million people without electricity from Georgia to New Jersey.
Transcript
00:00 And I'll tell you what, folks, Maryland got hit hard with trees down.
00:03 We had North Carolina Interstate 40 in North Carolina
00:07 had trees over it near Asheville.
00:09 So that was some dangerous times there.
00:11 We also had Alabama.
00:13 We've got some cones there being blown across the street.
00:16 And it was worse than that.
00:17 There was a lightning fatality in Alabama, sadly, as well.
00:21 More on those stories in just a bit.
00:22 But our top story tonight is taking us to the mid-Atlantic
00:25 and northeastern states where punishing storms produce soaking rain.
00:29 Gusty wind and powerful lightning this afternoon.
00:32 An apparent lightning strike even caused this work shed
00:35 to catch fire in central Pennsylvania and in Westminster, Maryland.
00:39 Multiple people are stuck in their cars after storms
00:42 blew down power poles and power lines on the roadway.
00:46 Over half a million people without power across that region.
00:50 And I'll tell you what, folks, if we take a look at what's happening
00:53 with these storm reports, there were hundreds of them on this Monday.
00:57 The majority of them in the eastern third of the nation.
00:59 As we look at what's been happening out there, it's been a situation
01:04 where we've been dealing with flash flooding.
01:06 We've been dealing with damaging winds, lots of trees down,
01:10 roads blocked with trees over them, stretching really from the upstate
01:14 New York all the way down to north Florida.
01:16 We also had some very large hail.
01:18 Melissa Constanzo, who's going to be joining us soon, was talking about
01:21 large hail in northwest Kansas, but also Virginia.
01:25 Had some storms that had greater than baseball sized hail as well.
01:29 So you're looking at the storm reports there.
01:31 Now, when you get all these wind reports, you're going to get a lot of power
01:34 outages, boy, especially in these big population areas like Maryland
01:38 and Pennsylvania, down into the Virginias and the Carolinas.
01:42 You see hundreds of thousands still without power across many of these states.
01:46 And some of these storms are still trying to hold together
01:48 as we head into this Monday night until one a.m.
01:52 Between New York City and Albany, there's a severe thunderstorm watch.
01:56 And we've had some strong storms there in that vicinity recently.
01:59 So still batten down the hatches there and also the tornado watch situation.
02:04 Those storms are still possible to fire up and down the Delaware River Valley.
02:09 But that threat appears to be moving off the coast as we head into this Monday night.
02:14 As a matter of fact, we'll take you to the radar right now
02:17 and see what's happening across the northeast.
02:20 We've got the storms that have been rolling through upstate and western
02:23 New York, leaving flash flooding in their wake.
02:25 There's actually a flash flood warning west of Syracuse.