Violent evening storms following a day of triple-digit temperatures have wiped out power to more than 2 million people across the eastern United States and caused two fatalities in Virginia—including a 90-year-old woman asleep in bed when a tree slammed into her home. The storms that converged on Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, DC, Indiana, and Ohio packed winds topping 70mph in some places, uprooting trees and damaging numerous homes. They came after a day of sweltering heat across the region. The nation's capital reached 104 degrees just before 3pm, according to the National Weather Service, beating a record of 101 set in 1934.
As of 1am this morning, Pepco was reporting 406,000 outages in the District of Columbia and Montgomery and Prince George's counties, Md. "We have more than half our system down," said a Pepco rep. "This is definitely going to be a multi-day outage." West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency after more than 500,000 customers in 27 counties were left without electricity. (More thunderstorms stories.)
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