Massive storm system hitting Mid-Atlantic loses some steam

WASHINGTON -- 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 before the evening rush hour, bringing thunder and 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 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 occurred 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 an old yellow tulip poplar tree that toppled during heavy winds and rains. The father was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

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 move people to safety.

Dire predictions from forecasters, including warnings throughout the region of tornadoes and thunderstorms, led to precautions throughout several states.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Even before merging, the individual storms remained powerful, Bunting said.

Besides reports of damaging winds and preliminary tornado sightings, the weather service has received reports of hail at least an inch in diameter in locations stretching from southeast Minnesota to Virginia, he said.

In Ohio, storms with swift, straight-line winds soaked parts of the state, knocking down trees and barns and leaving many without power Thursday as commuters dodged fallen branches on roads and faced backups at intersections where traffic lights were out.

Straight-line winds topping 70 mph were reported and more than two dozen tornado warnings were issued as two rounds of storms pummeled the state, but no twisters have been confirmed, said Phillip Johnson, who was part of the team monitoring developments for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.

Play was suspended at the U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club outside Philadelphia less than two hours after the start of the first round and resumed about three hours later before another brief delay in the evening.

In New Jersey, officials opened the soaked state's Emergency Operations Center on Thursday morning to monitor the storm's progress. The weather service issued a flood watch for most of the state. Forecasters predicted 1 to 2 inches of rain will fall on swollen rivers and streams. As thunderstorms rumbled across the southern and central parts of the state, thousands of residents were left without power.

In northern New York, rain sent rivers and streams over their banks, leading to evacuations and road closures.

Overnight, thunderstorms that punched through northern Illinois caused significant wind damage, mainly in rural areas west and south of Chicago. The city was largely spared. The weather service said intense winds estimated to have reached 70-80 mph in some areas snapped large trees at their trunks or uprooted them entirely.

Whether the storms were a derecho will take time to determine, forecasters said. A derecho is a storm of strong straight-line winds spanning at least 240 miles. The systems are distinctive and take on a comma or bow shape, and usually have a large area of very cold cloud tops not typically seen in an ordinary thunderstorm.

"A derecho is based more on research," said Evan Bentley, a meteorologist at the weather service office for northern Indiana. "How much damage, how widespread it was." It could take days to determine whether the storms met the criteria, he said.

Even if the storm wasn't a derecho, it still brought several tornadoes, large hail and flooding that did some damage Wednesday.

In the small town of Belmond, Iowa, about 90 miles north of Des Moines, Duwayne Abel, owner of Cattleman's Steaks & Provisions restaurant, said a tornado demolished part of the building. No one was in the restaurant at the time.

"I was, oh, eight miles west of town and I looked toward town and I could see a funnel cloud, having no idea it was exactly where our restaurant was," Abel said. His wife and an employee were able to get out of the restaurant and sought shelter in a basement.

Last year, a derecho caused at least $1 billion in damage from Chicago to Washington, killing 13 people and leaving more than 4 million people without power, according to the weather service. Winds reached nearly 100 mph in some places.

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Associated Press writers David Dishneau in Baltimore; Sarah Brumfield in Washington; Carla K. Johnson in Chicago; Malcolm Ritter in New York; Charles Wilson in Indianapolis; Barbara Rodriguez in Des Moines, Iowa; and Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.