Severe thunderstorms accompanied by strong winds downed trees and knocked out power Tuesday night to more than 230,000 homes and businesses across the Washington region.
At one point, 200,000 utility customers in Maryland were without power, according to the PowerOutage website.
Of those, 64,000 were reported in Prince George’s County alone.
Trees fell on houses and roads in many places as wind gusts reached more than 60 mph amid episodes of torrential rain and rattling hailstones. The storm moved from west to east across the region, sparing few, if any, jurisdictions.
Few places were hit harder than the Olney area of Montgomery County. Falling trees damaged about 20 homes, according to fire spokesman Pete Piringer.
About half a dozen families were displaced, he said, and indicated there could be more.
Parts of Prince George’s County also appeared to be hard hit. The Berwyn Heights, College Park and Greenbelt areas of the county “were hard hit by the line of storms that came through,” the Prince George’s County Fire Department said.
He cited multiple reports of downed wires and trees. A man was seriously injured when a tree fell on a home on Lakeland Road in College Park, according to Michael Yurishyn, a fire department spokesman.
In just one example of the storm’s widespread impact, the city of College Park canceled a 7:30 p.m. meeting of its mayor and council, citing a citywide power outage.
In the surrounding area, thickets of fallen trees and broken branches stretched across storm-soaked streets, according to a witness.
The storm, which darkened the sky as it swirled from West Virginia into the Washington area, was a stunning sight for many as lightning flashed repeatedly and descended to the ground in jagged streaks.
The trees that withstood the furious onslaught twisted and twisted under the blows of the wind. A 70 mph gust was measured near Centerville in Fairfax County, Virginia, according to a report obtained by the National Weather Service.
At Reagan National Airport, instruments measured a gust of 52 miles per hour.
But the eastward departure of the storm allowed the orange rays of the setting sun to shine from beneath the dark sunset edges of the rain clouds.
Even as sunset light began to flood the area and rainbows could be seen, lightning still played among the departing clouds.
As always with such summer storms, the impact varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction or even street to street.
In upper northwest Washington, two people were in a car at 42nd and Chesapeake streets NW when a tree fell on top of the car. Both occupants made it out unharmed, according to the D.C. Fire Department. Wires later fell on an unoccupied vehicle, igniting it, the fire department said.
The Washington Nationals baseball game was postponed. The game will be played on Wednesday as part of a split game, the team said.
Weather has reportedly forced the cancellation of a baseball game at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, Maryland. A photo shows a large tree cut near the base of its trunk lying in the parking lot.
In various parts of the region, witnesses have seen hail bouncing as it hits the pavement. In Fauquier County, Virginia, a witness told the weather service of hail measuring nearly an inch in diameter.
Both Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport saw more than 0.40 inches of rain per hour.
Tuesday turned into another significantly rainy day in what has already been a rainy month.
As if to emphasize the link between summer, heat and thunderstorms, temperatures plummeted as the storm passed.
In the space of about four hours, what was a steamy afternoon in the late 1990s in Reagan turned into a cool evening in the 1970s.
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