A powerful storm downed trees and power lines, leaving more than a half million customers in Pennsylvania, Ohio and neighboring states in the dark on Wednesday morning, with local officials reporting at least three deaths.
More than 440,000 customers were without power in Pennsylvania and another 50,000 were in the dark in Ohio, according to PowerOutage.us, a website that tracks outages. Neighboring states including Michigan, New York and West Virginia reported thousands of outages as well.
One man was electrocuted on Tuesday evening while trying to put out a mulch fire near a utility pole as severe weather hit the State College area, damaging many trees and utility lines, police said. The 22-year-old man encountered an active electric current while trying to put out the fire and died at the scene, police said in a news release.
In Pittsburgh, first responders were called to the South Side Slopes area on Tuesday evening for reports of a person electrocuted by live wires and the person died on the scene, according to a Pittsburgh Public Safety Department social media post. The department urged residents to use extreme caution when moving through the city as there were multiple hazards such as downed trees and possible live wires.
Allegheny County officials confirmed two storm-related deaths, including the one reported by Pittsburgh officials and a 67-year-old man killed by a fallen tree at a home in Ross Township, just outside Pittsburgh.
The city’s 911 system experienced some outages due to the extreme weather, but was later restored, the department said.
The National Weather Service’s Pittsburgh office said destructive wind damage was seen across its region Tuesday. Straight-line winds gusted over 80 mph to 90 mph (129 kph to 145 kph), which is stronger than many EF0 and EF1 tornadoes typically seen in this region, but over a wider area, the weather service office said in a social media post.
The National Weather Service warned that heavy to excessive rainfall could produce additional flash flooding Wednesday across parts of the southern Plains with the greatest risk along the Red River Valley into western Arkansas. Scattered severe thunderstorms were possible from north central Texas across the region and into Louisiana with possible hail, damaging winds and tornadoes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.