More than 100,000 homes and businesses in four states remained without power Saturday as Tropical Storm Debby moved away from the United States.
After making landfall in Florida as a hurricane, Debby spent most of the week spawning tornadoes and flooding, damaging homes and claiming lives as it moved up the East Coast.
Significant damage and flood warnings after storm Debby
Even as skies began to clear, a flood warning remained in effect for a small region of upstate New York into Saturday night, with up to 7 inches of rain expected to accumulate.
The National Weather Service reported that water levels were slowly receding, but many roads were still impassable due to flooding.
Restoration efforts and evacuations
In Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont, nearly 170,000 customers remained without power Saturday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.
Some utility companies warned it could take days to restore power.
Ohio was the hardest hit state, with more than half of the power outages due to Debby-related storms, including several tornadoes that tore through the state’s northeast region on Wednesday.
On Friday, Debby’s last day over U.S. soil before heading toward Canada, it brought flooding to south-central New York and north-central Pennsylvania, prompting evacuations and helicopter rescues.
The post-tropical cyclone continued to dump rain on New England and southern Quebec on Friday night, though conditions improved the following morning as the system moved northeast.
Tornado in Pennsylvania and disaster declaration in Florida
The weather service confirmed that an EF-1 tornado touched down in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital, early Friday.
With estimated winds of up to 105 mph, the tornado touched down shortly after 4:30 a.m., traveling 3 ½ miles to the north, causing significant damage to a warehouse, a church and several homes, as well as downing dozens of trees.
The National Hurricane Center reported that Debby weakened to a tropical depression on Thursday afternoon and became a post-tropical cyclone on Friday.
The hurricane had first made landfall Monday morning on Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane, then emerged into the Atlantic before making landfall again in South Carolina Thursday morning as a tropical storm.
In a statement, President Joe Biden declared a major disaster in Florida and ordered the delivery of federal aid to supplement recovery efforts in areas affected by Debby.
At least nine people died in incidents involving Debby, most in traffic accidents or from falling trees.
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