At least six deaths have been linked to Isaias after it made landfall as a hurricane in North Carolina and then sped north, lashing areas in its path with heavy rain and high winds that caused flooding and prompted rescues, officials said.
The storm-related deaths occured in North Carolina, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York City.
After bringing soaking rains and high winds to the Caribbean, Isaias made landfall near Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, late Monday as a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph winds. It then weakened to a tropical storm with heavy rain and high winds as it made its way north.
The storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people in its path.
As of 8 p.m. Tuesday, Isaias was moving through New England with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph, the National Hurricane Center said in a statement. Tropical storm warnings stretched from Watch Hill, Rhode Island, to Stonington, Maine, and warnings were also in effect for Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and Block Island.
In Philadelphia, about 200 homes were dealing with flooding and dozens of rescues were reported, officials said.
“We have multiple water rescues in progress across the entire city,” Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam K. Thiel said in a video briefing Tuesday.
Two people, identified only as an adult man and an adult woman, died after tornadoes struck a mobile home park overnight in Bertie County, North Carolina, county officials said in a statement.
Sharee and Jeffrey Stilwell took shelter in their living room about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday as a tornado hit. Sharee Stillwell told The Associated Press that their home shook “like a freight train.”
“I felt like the house was going to cave in,” Jeffrey Stillwell, 65, said. There was little damage to their home.
In Mechanicsville, Maryland, a person was killed when a tree fell on their vehicle sometime before 9:33 a.m. Tuesday, and a sheriff’s office official said it is being treated as a weather-related incident.
Shortly before noon in Milford, Delaware, a woman died after being struck by a tree branch while assessing storm damage, state police said; and in Queens, New York, a 60-year-old man died when a tree fell and struck the parked van he was in about 1 p.m., police said.
A 44-year-old woman died in Upper Saucon Township, Pennsylvania, southeast of Allentown, after her vehicle was swept downstream, the coroner’s office said.
In Virginia, a tornado in Lancaster County left two people injured, while another damaged house roofs in Suffolk, according to the National Weather Service.
In Norfolk, the First Baptist Church was heavily damaged, according to NBC affiliate WAVE, but no injuries were reported. A pastor at the church had posted prayers on the congregation’s blog in anticipation of the storm.
Isaias is forecast to continue moving north-northeast near 40 mph and is expected to move into southern Canada Tuesday night.
By Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, the storm is expected to become “post-tropical,” the hurricane center said.
But tropical-storm conditions were forecast to bring high winds to New England, which could topple trees and cause power outages, and between 1 to 3 inches of rain could fall on parts of northeast New York, northern Vermont, northern New Hampshire, and Southern Quebec.
That could cause flash flooding, the hurricane center said. Tornadoes were also possible across the southern parts of New England Tuesday night.
The storm has already caused power outages across the entire region affected.
In the New York City region and northern communities, about 213,000 customers were without power about 8 p.m., Consolidated Edison said on its website.
In New Jersey, more than 1.3 million power outages had been reported statewide, Gov. Phil Murphy tweeted around 5 p.m.
Tens of thousands of people were without power in North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, with more than 150,000 without power in Virginia, according to the website poweroutage.us, which collects and aggregates power outage information.