Tropical Storm Isaias raced up the Atlantic seaboard on Tuesday, generating powerful winds that put New York City and other parts of the U.S. Northeast under a rare tornado warning, after a twister killed at least two people in North Carolina.
The fast-moving storm knocked out power for 1.4 million customers from North Carolina to New York and threatened flash flooding, as stunned northeasterners took cellphone video of tornadoes, which are more commonly seen in the South or Midwest.
Social media images showed tornadoes in Cape May, Marmora and Long Beach Island along New Jersey’s southern shore, and tornado damage in Dover, Delaware.
In Bear, Delaware, Tammy Trelford Campos said she was terrified to hear a tornado destroy her backyard.
“The damage is crazy. No power, almost all my trees are split or uprooted, water is coming in all windows,” she said on Facebook.
The center of the storm was about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Philadelphia as of 1 p.m. Eastern Time (1700 GMT), the National Hurricane Center said. Maximum sustained winds reached 70 miles per hour (110 kph).
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio issued a tornado warning through 4 p.m ET. Massachusetts and other parts of New England were under a National Weather Service tornado watch until 9 p.m. ET, and most counties in New Jersey until 4 p.m. ET.
All New York state-run COVID-19 testing sites were closed because of the storm and would reopen on Wednesday, a Department of Health spokesman said.
The storm made landfall as a hurricane in North Carolina late Monday, killing two people at a mobile home park that was reduced to a field of debris.
“It doesn’t look real,” Bertie County Sheriff John Holley told WNCT television. “There’s nothing there. … Vehicles are turned over. Vehicles are piled on top of each other. It’s just very sad.”
