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Punishing thunderstorms target East Coast; evacuations ordered amid Illinois dam concerns
By Thao Nguyen, Cybele Mayes-Osterman and Minnah Arshad, USA TODAY,
19 hours ago
A line of severe thunderstorms will move into the East Coast on Tuesday after a large portion of the Midwest experienced severe weather that left at least one person dead the day before.
The heavy rain left parts of the Midwest at risk of flash flooding on Tuesday. A stretch of Missouri and Illinois was placed under a flash flood warning, hours after the National Weather Service issued a flash flood threat in southern-central Indiana into early Wednesday.
East-central Missouri was also hit with a tornado warning just after noon on Tuesday after radar detected a tornado moving at 15 mph, according to the weather service. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 200,000 customers were without power in Illinois and Indiana, according to a USA TODAY outage tracker.
Severe thunderstorms also moved over the New York area on Tuesday. The weather service issued tornado warnings across a broad swath of the state including Jefferson County, Chemung County, and Cayuga County, on Tuesday afternoon.
The agency's Albany office warned of heavy rainfall and damaging winds that could down power lines as scattered storms spread through the evening.
The severe weather on Tuesday comes after a "complex of destructive storms" moved across eastern Iowa into northern Illinois on Monday night, according to the National Weather Service office in Chicago. Multiple tornadoes were reported along the line of storms as it moved through the Chicago metro, the agency said, adding that its staff had to briefly seek shelter from a tornado.
The weather service confirmed three tornadoes on Monday night. One tornado was confirmed by radar near Sugar Grove, a village about 46 miles west of Chicago, according to the weather service. Another two tornadoes touched down near Des Moines, Iowa – one in Windsor Heights and another in Grimes.
A 44-year-old woman died in Cedar Lake, an Indiana town around 45 miles south of Chicago, on Monday night after a tree fell on her home amid the severe storms, the Lake County Coroner's Office posted on Facebook .
On Tuesday, officials in Nashville, Illinois, a town about 50 miles east of St. Louis, issued an evacuation order amid the "imminent failure" of a local dam, putting the area at risk of flash flooding.
The announcement came after a flash flood warning was issued by the National Weather Service in St. Louis through 10:45 a.m. local time. Forecasters warned that thunderstorms and heavy rain on Tuesday morning could trigger "life-threatening" flooding of creeks, streams, highways, streets, urban areas and underpasses.
As of 1 p.m. local time Tuesday, the county's emergency management agency had documented more than 6 inches of rain.
Authorities said the local Red Cross was activated and a nearby shelter was established.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on X that she was in contact with local officials in the city of Rome and deployed resources from state police and other agencies to support recovery efforts.
Monday's series of storms was triggered by a derecho , according to Weather.com . Classified as a "wide-spread, long-lived wind storm" by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), derechos can come with fast-moving thunderstorms and showers.
The storms are rare but can cause destruction comparable to a tornado, according to the National Weather Service. Unlike tornadoes, they generally inflict damage in one direction, on a straight-line path.
A storm must sustain winds of 58 mph or greater and leave a path of damage at least 250 miles long to be classified as a derecho, according to the weather service. Many derechos pack wind gusts that blow at more than 100 mph, toppling power lines and trees and wreaking widespread devastation.
Meteorologists only see around one derecho every one to four years. They usually strike the eastern two-thirds of the country, and 70% happen from May to August, the weather service said.
Meanwhile, scorching heat continued for the third week this month as more than 126 million people remained under heat alerts across the country on Tuesday, according to heat.gov . The Weather Prediction Center said scorching temperatures are expected to continue to grip the East Coast, with major to extreme heat risk possible.
In Baltimore and Washington, D.C., the weather service warned of a "dangerously hot and humid" day; temperatures were expected to reach 102 degrees.
The weekslong heat wave has already set dozens of records and will challenge more through the week, AccuWeather said.
A strong cold front pushing across the central to eastern U.S. this week will bring an end to a wave of record-high temperatures in the region, the National Weather Service said Tuesday, though strong summer heat will continue to pose health risks.
"While record highs may be diminishing on Wednesday, the combination of another day of heat and high humidities will continue to produce life-threatening conditions," the weather service warned.
The cold front could also fuel widespread thunderstorms across the central and eastern U.S., the weather service said, which could cause flash flooding in some towns. The rain will be welcome in large swaths of the region where an unusually dry summer so far has spurred moderate to severe drought conditions.
Meanwhile, the weather service said no relief is in sight for an unusually hot season in the West, where temperatures are expected to reach 5 to 15 degrees above average and little rainfall is expected.
"Given the dry conditions, hot temps and low relative humidities, fire risks will continue across large portions of the West over the next few days," the weather service wrote.
The National Weather Service confirmed that at least one tornado touched down in the Urbandale area — a city part of the Des Moines metro area — on Monday evening.
The Des Moines Register , part of the USA TODAY Network, reported that more than 10,000 homes in the Des Moines metro area were in the dark on Monday night.
MidAmerican Energy Company has the most significant damage in areas around Windsor Heights and Urbandale, said Geoff Greenwood, a spokesperson for the company. More than 1,400 households in Des Moines were still without power on Tuesday, while more than 14,000 were without power in the Quad Cities.
At least four wildfires blazed in Oregon on Tuesday as the governor declared a state of emergency ahead of thunderstorms expected in the Portland area into the evening.
" I urge all Oregonians to take extreme precautions, particularly with lightning in the forecast for this weekend," Gov. Tina Kotek wrote in a statement . "It is incumbent on all of us to keep Oregon green and protect our communities.”
Kotek invoked the declaration specifically in response to the Cow Valley Fire, which had blazed through more than 133,400 acres and was only 16% contained, as of Tuesday afternoon.
The National Weather Service in Portland also issued a fire weather watch throughout the Willamette National Forest, around 80 miles south of Portland.
Forecasters warned that lightning from thunderstorms expected to move over the area on Tuesday night could start fires in the dry environment. Winds from the storm could also spread the flames, the weather service said.
The largest, the Freeman Fire, was three quarters contained on Tuesday after it blazed through more than 32,500 acres.
The fire was sparked by a lightning strike last Thursday near Oracle, around 30 miles northwest of Tucson, and grew after it merged with another fire sparked by lightning, the Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network , reported.
Evacuation orders for nearby areas were lifted on Sunday.
Snow in Philly in July?
The National Weather Service office in Mount Holly, New Jersey issued a daily record report Monday morning saying a “trace” of snow at Philadelphia International Airport on Sunday set a new daily record.
The "snow" was really hail that fell in thunderstorms over the airport, the office stated in a post on X with a #TeamSnow hashtag. The "trace" of snow broke a record of 0.0 inches, set in 1870, the weather service office shared X. By Tuesday afternoon, the post had been viewed more than 166,000 times.
Under a policy of the National Centers for Environmental Information, hail is considered frozen precipitation under the same umbrella as snow, sleet, and graupel, the office stated in a response to its original post.
Earlier Monday, the San Juan County Sheriff's Office in southeast Utah confirmed that a man and his daughter died late last week after they ran out of water during a hike.
The sheriff's office said it was notified at 5:45 p.m. on July 12 of a deceased hiker in the Canyonlands National Park. About 15 minutes later, a second deceased hiker was reported in the same area.
The National Park Service reported that the pair of hikers were a father and daughter "who had become lost while hiking, according to the sheriff's office. The air temperature at the time of the incident was over 100 degrees, the National Park Service said.
"Dispatch informed NPS of emergency 911 texts from the hikers, reporting that they were lost and out of water," the sheriff's office said in a statement.
The father and daughter were identified as Albino Herrera Espinoza, 52, and Beatriz Herrera, 23, both from Green Bay, Wisconsin.
On Saturday, the Santa Clara-Ivins Public Safety Department in southwest Utah said first responders were dispatched to the Snow Canyon State Park, where preliminary information showed two individuals "suffering from a heat-related incident." The two individuals had signs of heat exhaustion and were transported to a hospital.
"While on the scene, a passerby contacted police and reported that a third individual was unconscious a short distance away," the department said in a news release. "The individual was identified as a 30-year-old female."
First responders determined that the woman was deceased, according to the department. Her death is being investigated by the department.
Dozens of heat-related deaths have been reported by state officials and local media this month. Although the death toll is expected to increase as the summer continues, experts previously told USA TODAY that the true death toll is likely higher.
Officials in Rockford, Illinois, are investigating the death of a 76-year-old man who was trapped as floodwaters swept away a pickup on Sunday, the Rockford Register Star , part of the USAT TODAY Network, reported.
The man was riding in the passenger seat of a Dodge Dakota truck as the woman driving tried to leave a parking lot inundated with flood water, according to the Winnebago County Coroner's Office.
When the truck was pulled into a nearby creek, the driver escaped through a window and was rescued, officials said. The man was trapped in the truck as it sank below the water. Local law enforcement tried to pull him out, but could not rescue him.
The truck was pulled from the creek and the man was pronounced dead around three hours later.
Authorities have not named either the man who died or the woman who was rescued.
Contributing: Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA TODAY; Victoria Reyna-Rodriguez, Ryan Magalhães, and Addison Lathers, Des Moines Register
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