More than 130,000 customers without power as major storm hits East Coast

ABC NewsBy MAX GOLEMBO, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — More than 130,000 customers are without power Monday evening along the East Coast after a major storm hit the region.

New York has more than 23,000 customers without power, Massachusetts, 47,000, Rhode Island, 32,000 and Connecticut has more than 28,000 without power.

The storm also produced a tornado Monday, 14 miles west of Dover, Delaware, according to the National Weather Service.

At 3:20 p.m. ET, a tornado-producing storm was located near Goldsboro, Delaware, moving northeast at 40 mph, the NWS said.

A tornado watch has been issued for the Mid-Atlantic through 7 p.m. Monday, with the threat of damaging winds and isolated tornadoes for Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and southern New Jersey.

Heavy rain and gusty winds will be spreading across the Northeast through the rest of the day. Some flooding is possible and wind gusts could reach 50-60 mph, especially along the coast.

By Tuesday morning and into the afternoon, the rain will be completely cleared out along the East Coast with some leftover snow showers for parts of the eastern Great Lakes, from Pittsburgh to Cleveland to Buffalo, New York.

Earlier, the storm system moved through the South over the weekend and into the early Monday morning hours and produced a possible tornado near Tallahassee, Florida, with reports of some damage.

More than a half a foot of rain fell in eastern Texas, producing flash flooding in the Houston metro area.

The center of the storm system moved through the southern Appalachian Mountains Monday morning, spreading heavy rain into the Mid-Atlantic with thunderstorms, damaging winds and even a tornado threat for the Southeast.

On the back side of this large storm system, it is turning much colder with snow and the heaviest snow will be from Ohio into western Pennsylvania and New York, where locally a foot of snow is possible.

Some of the snow will work its way down to the mountains of North Carolina, where more than a half a foot of snow is possible and a Winter Storm Warning has been issued from western New York to North Carolina.

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.