Violent Storms Black Out 160,000 From Michigan to Virginia

(Bloomberg) -- About 160,000 homes and businesses in eight states were without power Monday after violent thunderstorms and heavy rains swept through the U.S. Northeast.

Virginia and Pennsylvania were the hardest hit, with about 93,000 customers in the dark, according to utility and electric cooperative websites at 10:45 a.m. local time. There were about 26,000 outages in New Jersey and 12,000 in Michigan. In New York, service disruptions fell to about 9,700.

The worst of the storms swept through New York at about 5 a.m., but gusts capable of damaging trees and power lines will last until late Monday, said Robert Oravec, a senior branch forecaster with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. A gust of 70 miles (113 kilometers) per hour was reported at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, Oravec said. Wind speed could reach 45 mph in Manhattan, the National Weather Service said.

Wind advisories were in effect into the evening from Delaware to Massachusetts plus parts of New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia where gusts of up to 50 miles per hour are expected, according to the National Weather Service.

“It doesn’t have to be severe to cause power outages,” Oravec said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jim Efstathiou Jr. in New York at jefstathiou@bloomberg.net;Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Doan at ldoan6@bloomberg.net, Joe Ryan, Christine Buurma

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