New York Thunderstorms Raise Flood Risk as Heat Dissipates in US
(Bloomberg) -- New York City will have a cooler, soggier Sunday now that the massive heat dome across the US East that taxed power grids and snarled transit has started to crack, but temperatures in Washington and points south will still remain sultry through Sunday.
In New York, flood watches have replaced heat warnings as thunderstorms are set to roll through the area Sunday into Monday, the National Weather Service said. The high in Central Park is forecast to be 83F (28C) today and 73F tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the highest temperatures will be in Washington, set to reach 97F Sunday, and south through the eastern Virginia and the Carolinas, where heat advisories are in place, said Bryan Jackson, a forecaster with the US Weather Prediction Center. The worst of the heat across the US is over.
“There is no extreme heat warning in effect right now, it is all advisories,” Jackson said. “From the DC area south that is the lingering core of the heat before it dissipates.”
The extreme heat and attendant storms wilted Fourth of July celebrations in Washington, slowed Amtrak and NJ Transit trains to a crawl and taxed power grids across the region as residents and businesses used more electricity to stay cool.
At one point on Friday, 197 million people from Kansas to Maine were under extreme heat warnings or advisories. On Sunday, there were only 36 million under the less severe advisories, Jackson said.
As the heat dome broke up, powerful thunderstorms swept through the eastern half of the US and as of 8 a.m. New York time more than 1 million homes and businesses were without power, according to PowerOutage.com. Michigan was the hardest hit with 228,704 outages, followed by Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, which all had 100,000 or more.
On Saturday, there were 511 filtered high wind reports across the US, mainly in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, that tore down power lines and toppled trees, the Storm Prediction Center said. There were also 57 incidents of hail and three tornadoes tracked mainly in the Great Plains.
A line of storms will move out of Ohio into New Jersey and New York later, bringing heavy rain with up to 4 inches possibly falling across Manhattan, Queens and the city’s other boroughs through Monday. There is a level 2 risk of severe thunderstorms across the Mid-Atlantic, including Washington and Philadelphia later on Sunday.
There “is a concern for repeating, heavy thunderstorms,” Jackson said.
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