WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Powerful thunderstorms packing heavy rain and high winds lashed the U.S. Middle Atlantic area late on Tuesday, disrupting train travel, grounding flights and cutting off power to thousands.
The fast-moving band of storms stretching from Virginia to southern New Jersey dumped up to an inch (2.5 cm) of rain in less than an hour in some places, said Jim Hayes, a National Weather Service meteorologist in College Park, Maryland.
"The storms were intense but they were moving pretty quickly," he said. The storms were fueled by high humidity and temperatures that topped 90 Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) in Washington on Tuesday.
Winds of up to 70 miles per hour (113 kph) were recorded in southern New Jersey, and the line of storms stretched westward into West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Much of the Washington area was under a flash flood warning.
A total of about 91,000 customers were without power in northern Virginia and in the Washington and Baltimore areas, power companies reported.
Amtrak, the U.S. passenger rail service, said the bad weather had cut service between Washington and Philadelphia. Trains between Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia were delayed, it said.
Flightaware.com, which tracks airline flights, said more than 200 were delayed or canceled at each of New York's LaGuardia, Newark's Liberty International and Philadelphia International airports.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Eric Walsh)
