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A band of extreme weather that ripped through states including Kentucky and West Virginia Tuesday night sparked devastating tornadoes and record flash flooding that left dozens of people trapped in their houses and vehicles, and injured several others.
First responders in one West Virginia county were overwhelmed by the volume of calls as waters rose to unprecedented levels, with rescuers cutting through attic roofs to free those inside. Patrick Morrisey, the governor, placed all 55 counties under a state of emergency.
In Kentucky, there were reports of multiple tornadoes, flooding, landslides, and widespread damage to infrastructure, including a bridge that was swept away.
The threat from extreme weather conditions continued through the mid-Atlantic region on Wednesday, AccuWeather said, after damaging winds also stretched into New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
“By Wednesday, the severe weather threat will shift southward, focusing on southern Delaware and southeastern Maryland into central and southeastern Virginia, and central and eastern North Carolina,” the weather outlet warned in a bulletin.
Officials in Buckhannon, West Virginia, were assessing damage early on Wednesday after flooding they described as “catastrophic”. MetroNews, citing data from the National Weather Service (NWS), said the Sand Run stream crested at 10.63ft on Tuesday night, surpassing the 8.3ft mark set during floods in 1985.
Local media in Upshur county reported “chaotic radio traffic” between first responders and scenes including: “People hanging from trees. Bridges destroyed. Roads washed out. Structures floating down creeks. Entire families in the water. Cars abandoned. Houses colliding into one another”.
Robbie Skinner, the Buckhannon mayor, told MetroNews on Tuesday night: “I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’ve lived here for 37 years. The river is still rising, we’re not done yet.”
Outlets reported that water rescue crews in swift boats were moving from property to property cutting holes in roofs to free people trapped in their attics, and dozens of people being evacuated by boat from a flooded hotel.
Tens of thousands of customers were still without electricity in Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia, on Wednesday morning, poweroutage.us said, with many more having been restored.
Some of the worst damage from tornadoes came in Kentucky. Multiple people were injured in Grayson county, officials there said, one with serious injuries requiring hospital admission. Up to 25 buildings were severely damaged or “completely gone”, Carey Sims, the county’s director of emergency management, told WDRB News.
The NWS office in Louisville said in a post on X that it planned to conduct damage surveys in at least four areas and across seven counties of the state on Wednesday morning.
In Mississippi and Louisiana, meanwhile, preparations continued for the arrival of Tropical Storm Bertha, the second named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season expected to bring heavy rain and winds of up to 50mph to the New Orleans metropolitan area and surrounding region.
In an early morning bulletin Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Bertha’s “appearance has gone downhill”, and that vertical windshear and interaction with land would cause further weakening.
The storm continued to move west in the Gulf of Mexico and was expected to make landfall later on Wednesday, the NHC said.
Beaches remained closed, and residents along the coast installed sandbags to protect against the storm surge.
“Isolated areas of flash flooding remain possible through early Friday along the central to the western Gulf coast from western Florida to southern Texas,” the NHC advisory said.
