One of the most severe storms systems in the past few years swept through the mid-Atlantic states last night, disrupting power to millions and taking down some of the web’s biggest websites.
Two people were killed by the storms, while five people were killed by the excessive heat that preceded it.
An extremely violent thunderstorm complex, called a “derecho,” left in its wake a trail of power outages and destruction from Indiana to New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, D.C., and northern North Carolina Friday afternoon and night.
The storms, which blasted the region with 80-90mph winds, knocked out power for over 3 million people across the eastern U.S.
Fallen trees killed two people in Virginia, a 90-year-old woman in her home and a man who was driving his car.
The damage from the storms has caused the suspension of the third round of the AT&T National because of several trees on the ground at Congressional.
Some tents were blown over, and the wooden sign identifying the 11th hole was ripped from its post on the tee box.
“Winds in the range of 70-80 mph were reported,” according to a statement issued by the PGA Tour. “No confirmation has been made on a tornado. There are trees and tents down all over the course and roads leading to the course. Clean-up has begun. Electricity is out at the course.”
“At this time, it’s unknown if competition will take place today,” according to Saturday’s statement. “Competition will definitely resume on Sunday.”
Due to service disruptions, Amtrak has temporarily suspended service from Washington D.C. to Philadelphia until at least mid-morning on Saturday.
Washington D.C. suffered the worst damage, with its Metrorail train cars needing to be returned to their stations.
“It has had a widespread effect on the region,” said Metro spokesman Dan Stessel. Approximately 17 train stations were operating on backup power.
Even some of the internet’s biggest websites were affected by the storms.
The storms took down Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud in North Virginia. Amazon EC2 runs many large websites. Netflix, Instagram, and Pinterest were all knocked offline during the severe storms.
The real kicker? Here in the Mid Atlantic, we could do it all again today (Saturday). Real Feel temperatures will be in excess of 100 degrees and there is a chance for more strong storms this morning and later on tonight.
Related articles
- Storms Lash Out In Mid-Atlantic After Sweltering Heat (npr.org)
- Mid-Atlantic storms knock out power to nearly 2M (bostonherald.com)
- DC sweats after storm cuts power (bbc.co.uk)
- Mid-Atlantic Storms Knock out Power to Nearly 2M (abcnews.go.com)
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