BOSTON (Reuters) – The Mid-Atlantic is expected to be battered by another round of severe weather over the weekend just as a previous series of storms and heat subside.
Damaging winds, hail and lightning were expected on Saturday during the late afternoon or evening as the threat of severe weather loomed in New York, Pennsylvania and south through Virginia, said AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist John Feernick.
The latest severe weather predictions come on the heels of Thursday's lightning storms that left thousands in the Northeast without power and killed an Amish teenager rushing to bring in hay before the rain struck.
Thunderstorms had rumbled through the region late Thursday, marked by dramatic and deadly lightning strikes.
Before the rain reached southeastern Pennsylvania, Levi Lantz, 13, was working his Amish family's farm in Christiana Borough when he was struck by lighting and killed, according to Eric Bieber, chief deputy coroner of Lancaster County.
Lantz was baling hay with his father when he was electrocuted by the lightning, Bieber said. Lantz's father was driving a team of horses about 30 feet away from his son and felt a slight tingling sensation from the electrical charge, he said.
"They were trying to get the hay in before the rain started," Bieber said.
Further west, in Tennessee, a second possible weather related death on Thursday was reported at the Bonnaroo music festival, which was gripped by stifling heat. The body of a 32-year-old woman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was found outside her tent at the festival and heat exhaustion may have played a role, authorities said.
Throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, a line of severe thunderstorms on Thursday brought strong winds and hail to communities from Washington, D.C., to Maine, according to National Weather Service reports.
Wind, downpours and lightning strikes in Connecticut caused damage and more than 140,000 power outages at the peak, the state's emergency management agency reported.
Later on Friday, 42,000 customers remained without power in what was expected to be a multi-day outage, according to emergency management officials.
New York officials reported roughly 13,000 customers remained in the dark statewide on Friday at mid-day with the bulk of outages in the lower Hudson Valley. Power was expected to be restored fully by midnight on Saturday, officials said.
The intense weather ushered in more moderate temperatures after days of unseasonable heat.
Temperatures across the region were expected to remain warm in some spots, but Friday's weather "is going to be a lot more tolerable than the last two days," said John Koch, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
After the weekend storm system passes, cooler air was expected to bring some relief to the Northeast early next week, according to AccuWeather.com.
(Reporting by Lauren Keiper and Daniel Lovering; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)
