Valley soaked by heavy storms

By JEFF STITT

jstitt@yourmvi.com

After a humid day where the temperature neared 100 degrees, heavy storms poured onto the Mon Valley Thursday night.

The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh spent the day warning area residents of the potential for storms and they arrived on schedule.

At 8:32 p.m. Thursday, NWS Pittsburgh issued a flash flood warning until 10:30 p.m. and said there could be flooding, winds up to 60 mph and hail the size of pennies in several areas, including the Mon Valley areas of McKeesport and West Mifflin.

The warning included the entire southeastern part of Allegheny County, from New Kensington down through Elizabeth, and into parts of Washington County, including Canonsburg and Monongahela. Areas under the warning in Westmoreland County included Delmont, Jeannette and Herminie.

Shortly after 8 p.m., Allegheny County reported a “higher than normal call volume” to 911. In a tweet, the county said callers were reporting power outages and flooding as well as wind damage. A short time later, the county tweeted that the 911 call volume returned to normal but multiple incidents were being responded to throughout the county.

At 9:57 p.m. Thursday, NWS Pittsburgh issued a flash flood warning for Valley areas including West Newton, Perryopolis, Lynnwood-Pricedale, Roscoe, Fayette City, Allenport and Stockdale. That warning was due to be in place until around 1 a.m.

“At 9:57 p.m. EDT, Doppler radar indicated thunderstorms producing heavy rain across the warned area. Flash flooding is ongoing or expected to begin shortly,” NWS stated.

As of 9:50 p.m. Thursday, West Penn Power reported that thousands of customers were affected by outages in Allegheny County, including 115 in White Oak, fewer than five in Elizabeth Borough and fewer than five in Elizabeth Township.

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