The sun came out, but more than 100,000 homes and businesses in four states lost power Saturday as Debby finally left the U.S.
After initially arriving in Florida as a hurricane, the storm continued to spawn tornadoes and flooding, damaging homes and causing deaths for nearly a week as it moved along the east coast.
Although skies cleared, a flood warning remained in effect through Saturday night. A small part of northern New York received up to 7 inches of rain. The National Weather Service said the water there was slowly receding and many streets were still flooded.
Nearly 170,000 homes in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont were without power as of Saturday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us, and some utilities said restoration could take several days. More than half of the outages were in Ohio, where Debby-related storms, including tornadoes, ripped through the northeastern part of the state on Wednesday.
Debby’s final day over the U.S. before moving into Canada, rain flooded south-central New York and north-central Pennsylvania on Friday, requiring evacuations and helicopter rescues. The post-tropical cyclone continued to bring rain to New England and southern Quebec on Friday night, but conditions improved the next morning as the system continued to move northeast.
Some of the worst flash flooding in New York occurred in villages and hamlets in a predominantly rural area south of the Finger Lakes.
In Steuben County, which borders Pennsylvania, authorities ordered the evacuation of the towns of Jasper, Woodhull and part of Addison, saying people were trapped because floodwaters had made several roads impassable. Recovery efforts were already underway Saturday morning as rescue workers cleared away debris and helped residents pump floodwater out of their basements.
Officials in Tioga County in north-central Pennsylvania said a search and rescue operation is underway for a person missing in the Knoxville area after flooding forced dozens of people to be rescued.
Fire Chief William Goltz of the Crary Hose Co. in Westfield said 30 to 50 water rescues were conducted using boats and two helicopters, and those rescued included some firefighters who became trapped while trying to help others.
Officials said around 100 people were left homeless and several emergency shelters were opened, but by Saturday afternoon only 14 were still in an emergency shelter. They called on the public to document the damage before clean-up work begins and to send them pictures of the flooding.
The weather service confirmed that an EF-1 tornado touched down in Pennsylvania’s capital early Friday. Meteorologists said the tornado, with peak winds estimated at 105 mph (169 kph), touched down in Harrisburg shortly after 4:30 a.m. and traveled nearly 3.5 miles (5.6 km) north, ripping off a warehouse door and tearing off the roof of a church, as well as causing roof and structural damage to several homes. Dozens of trees were uprooted.
Debby was downgraded to a tropical depression Thursday afternoon and was a post-tropical cyclone on Friday, the National Hurricane Center said. It made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday, emerged over the Atlantic and made a second landfall in South Carolina as a tropical storm early Thursday morning.
There have been at least nine deaths related to Debby, most of them in car accidents or from fallen trees.
In Vermont, Governor Phil Scott had warned that the remnants of Debby could cause severe damage, including in already flooded areas that were hit by flash floods twice last month. However, a flood warning was lifted that evening.
On Saturday afternoon, about 19,000 homes and businesses in Vermont were without power, up from more than 44,000 the day before. Officials said wind gusts of more than 60 mph knocked down huge trees in some places where the ground was still wet from earlier storms.
“There is widespread, extensive damage in many places,” said Mike Burke, vice president of operations for Green Mountain Power. “The repeated storms we are experiencing in Vermont are not only heartbreaking, they are also occurring more frequently and causing more damage like this.”
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Associated Press writers Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York; Lisa Rathke in Barre, Vermont; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Susan Haigh in Norwich, Connecticut; Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire and Ron Todt in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
