A storm system that caused flooding in the Southeast was moving up the East Coast on Monday with the potential to cause airport delays of several hours.
Some of the storms could become severe with lightning, strong winds, downpours, hail and possibly tornadoes. Rain and scattered thunderstorms also were forecast in New England and the Ohio Valley.
Over the weekend, the storms pounded the Southeast with large hail, lightning and up to 8 inches of rain, forcing some people from their homes, washing out roads and flooding rivers.
Parts of a dam failed Sunday near Albany, in Lee County, where 4 inches of rain fell in 24 hours. Firefighters urged nearby residents to evacuate, but they could not say how many actually did.
Public works crews dug out a section of the dam to relieve the pressure on the rest of the structure.
“We worked well and managed to eliminate a potentially dangerous threat,” said William Clark, the county’s public works director.
Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama got the worst of the weekend storms, with up to 8 inches of rain and hail as big as baseballs Sunday in parts of Georgia.
Firefighters in northwest Atlanta had to use ladders to rescue children from a house surrounded by rising water.
A possible tornado Sunday afternoon damaged trees and homes in a rural area near Montgomery, Ala., but no injuries were reported, said Anita Patterson, director of the Montgomery County Emergency Management Agency.
Two people were injured in Mississippi. A Yazoo County man was hospitalized in stable condition after a tree and power lines fell on his car, agency spokeswoman Lea Stokes said. A woman in Yazoo County was treated and released after “hail went through the windshield of her car.”
Resident of southwest Georgia’s Dougherty County left Sunday church services to find that water had rapidly risen over a road. In Wilcox County, the rain washed out roads.
In the Pacific Northwest, snow fell in Washington state’s Cascades, turning Snoqualmie Pass into an icy mess where at least 30 accidents were reported, one of them fatal.
