Deadly Storms Across US Northeast Bring Floods, Tornado Alerts

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A cluster of severe thunderstorms pounded the US Northeast including New York City on Sunday, unleashing deadly flooding in Pennsylvania, halting operations at several airports, and prompting tornado watches across New England.

In Chicago, air quality has reached unhealthy levels as smoke drops down from Canadian wildfires.

At least five people died and two children were still missing after floods ripped through Bucks County, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia on Saturday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The saturated soil from Saturday’s rain could make flooding worse on Sunday across a swath of the East Coast, said Ashton Robinson Cook, a forecaster with the US Weather Prediction Center.

“There is a moderate risk of excessive rain from Jersey through southwestern Maine that includes Philadelphia, New York City and Boston,” Robinson Cook said.

Flood watches and warnings were in effect from Virginia to Maine, with tornado alerts for states including Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, where a NASCAR event was postponed due to severe weather.

All three major New York City-area airports had ground stops — or a temporary pause on operations — on Sunday afternoon because of the thunderstorms, as did an airport on Long Island. Boston’s airport also temporarily stopped operations because of weather. Hundreds of flights have been canceled and delayed at those airports, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking and data platform.

The storms come on the heels of a system last week that killed at least two people and cut roads and rail lines in New York’s Hudson Valley before going on to devastate Vermont.

A widespread area, including New York, may get as much as 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of rain, with some areas getting as much as 6 inches, the weather service said.

The New York City Emergency Management Department issued a travel advisory through Sunday night warning of the potential for urban flooding and urging New Yorkers to limit travel and stay inside.

Tornado watches, meaning that the dangerous storms could form, reached from the suburbs north and east of New York up to southern Maine, the National Weather Service said.

While the Northeast grapples with severe weather, air quality has dropped to unhealthy levels in Chicago as smoke from Canadian forest fires spreads through the Great Plains and Midwest. Residents were urged to reduce travel Sunday, so they won’t add to the pollution. Those with respiratory and pulmonary diseases, the elderly and small children are particularly vulnerable.

Air quality alerts have been posted across parts of Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Ohio, Missouri and Minnesota as well as all of Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, according to the National Weather Service. In Canada, air quality alerts have been issued in British Columbia, Alberta, Nunavut, Quebec, Saskatchewan and the Yukon, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.

There are 877 fires burning across Canada with 574 raging out of control, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. So far this year, fires have burned 10 million hectares—an area larger than the state of Maine and more than half the size of New York state.

–With assistance from Victoria Cavaliere.

Photograph: A lightning bolt strikes behind Two Manhattan West and the skyline of midtown Manhattan during a thunderstorm in New York City on July 14 Photo credit: Gary Hershorn/Corbis News/Getty Images