A massive storm system that started in the Upper Midwest brought soaking rains and heavy winds to the Mid-Atlantic on Thursday, causing widespread power outages, flash flooding and extensive flight delays, but still largely failing to live up to its fierce billing.
The storm came and went in the Washington, D.C., area ahead of the evening rush hour, bringing winds and thunder that knocked trees onto houses, cut power to thousands of homes and traffic signals and led to the brief closure of a bridge that leads to the beaches on Maryland’s Eastern shore.
The storms were blamed for two deaths.
Three tornadoes were reported in Maryland, though there were no immediate reports of damage.
“The wind was pretty bad. It was just a squall that came through really fast,” said Jim Estes, director of instruction at Olney Golf Park driving range, referring to a tornado reported in the Washington suburb of Olney.
A 19-year-old woman who works as an intern at Plumpton Park Zoo in Rising Sun, Md., north of Baltimore, was struck by lightning while feeding the animals and was taken to the hospital after a co-worker performed CPR. Lightning from a fast-moving storm may have sparked a fire that killed a western Pennsylvania man early Thursday, the state fire marshal said.
A second death was in Richmond, Va., where a 4-year-old boy was struck by a tree that uprooted while he was visiting a park with his father. Police Capt. Emmett Williams said the boy was crushed by a yellow poplar tree that toppled during heavy winds and rains. The father was taken to the hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.
Maymont Park board member Mary Lynn Bayliss said workers with bullhorns were scrambling around the 100 acres of preserved woodlands and gardens to try to get people to safety.
Dire predictions from forecasters, including warnings throughout the region of tornadoes and thunderstorms, led to precautions throughout several states.
Maryland transit officials briefly closed in both directions the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, a critical artery connecting the Baltimore-Washington area with Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Customers and employees of the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport were directed to seek shelter, in a bathroom or in the lowest level of the terminal.
Still, overall, the storms appear to have caused less wind damage than was feared through early Thursday, said Bill Bunting of the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. Whether they were as bad as anticipated “depends on where you live,” he said.
He said thunderstorms took longer than expected to merge into a large line that could cause widespread damage. The merger also happened farther east than expected, which limited the potential for widespread damage in Illinois and Indiana, though those states still had pockets of severe weather.
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