Hurricane Isaias: Almost 2.7 Million People Without Power

As Tropical Storm Isaias made its way up the east coast after making landfall in North Carolina late on Monday evening, millions of people were left without power after being battered down by high winds, intense rainfall and even some tornadoes. The hardest-hit state in terms of power outages wound up being New Jersey, which reported more than 1.2 million households without electricity, according to PowerOutage.US via CNN.

Behind New Jersey was Pennsylvania and New York, both of which reporting more than 350,000 outages. Virginia is approaching 250,000 cases while North Carolina and Connecticut each are above 100,000 without power. The tropical storm reported winds reaching 70 mph, which proved to wreak havoc on telephone poles while a string of tornadoes sent some areas into disarray. This list of affected areas included Delaware, which has approximately 51,825 households that lost power. The First State saw at least four funnels come across the state from Dover up into Middletown, tearing down walls of houses and sending sidings from home across towns. New Jersey also had a couple of tornadoes touch down closer to the coastline. The state’s governor, Phil Murphy, said “an enormous amount” of the reported outages had to do with tree-related damage, which continued to be an issue even after the rain moved out, “Power outages are going to be the big legacy from this storm.”

Isaias made landfall around 11:10 p.m. on Monday in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, as the hurricane featured winds reaching 85 mph. Robbie Berg, a National Hurricane Center specialist, told The Associated Press via USA Today that they did not expect “a whole lot of weakening” as it progressed up the coast, which turned out to be the case as it went from North Carolina and up into New York with a steady tenacity. The storm is expected to head into Canada sometime on Wednesday in the early morning. Before crashing into North Carolina, Isaias caught parts of Florida, but the state mostly avoided the havoc of the storm as its damaging winds remained offshore as the western half of the state mainly remained unscathed compared to what was expected to make landfall there.