Storm leaves three people dead in the US

cuts off power supply to more than 500K customers

A powerful storm on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, downed trees and power lines, leaving more than a half million customers in Pennsylvania, Ohio and neighboring states in the dark.

Local officials have reported at least three deaths.

According PowerOutage.us which tracks outages, more than 440,000 customers were without power in Pennsylvania and another 50,000 were in the dark in Ohio.

Neighboring states including Michigan, New York and West Virginia reported thousands of outages as well.

Local police said that one man was electrocuted on Tuesday evening while trying to put out a mulch fire near a utility pole as severe weather hit the State College area, damaging many trees and utility lines.

It said in a news release that the 22-year-old man encountered an active electric current while trying to put out the fire and died at the scene.

According to a Pittsburgh Public Safety Department social media post, In Pittsburgh, first responders were called to the South Side Slopes area on Tuesday evening.

This was reportedly for reports of a person electrocuted by live wires and the person died on the scene.

The department urged residents to use extreme caution when moving through the city.

It says this is because there were multiple hazards such as downed trees and possible live wires.

Allegheny County officials confirmed two storm-related deaths.

These included the one reported by Pittsburgh officials and a 67-year-old man killed by a fallen tree at a home in Ross Township, just outside Pittsburgh.

The city’s 911 system experienced some outages due to the extreme weather, but was later restored, the department said.

The National Weather Service’s Pittsburgh office said destructive wind damage was seen across its region Tuesday.

Straight-line winds gusted over 80 mph to 90 mph (129 kph to 145 kph).

This is reportedly stronger than many EF0 and EF1 tornadoes typically seen in this region.

However, this was supposedly over a wider area, according to a social media post by the weather service.

The National Weather Service warned that heavy to excessive rainfall could produce additional flash flooding Wednesday.

It projected that across parts of the southern plains were with the greatest risk along the Red River Valley into western Arkansas.

Scattered severe thunderstorms were possible from north central Texas across the region and into Louisiana with possible hail, damaging winds and tornadoes.

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