A storm swept across the eastern US on Monday evening, killing at least two people, grounding thousands of flights and leaving millions of houses and offices without electricity, the New York Times reported.
The line of storms crashed into homes and tore the buildings' roofs apart, according to preliminary reports from the National Weather Service.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered airports to ground flights along a busy travel corridor that links major US cities, including Atlanta, New York and Washington, leading to thousands of flights being delayed or cancelled.
The National Weather Service also issued a tornado warning in Mattapoisett during Tuesday's storms. The agency then sent a survey team to the town and confirmed "a tornado did take place" in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
About 400 people in the county were displaced, most of them in one apartment building where winds blew out windows and damaged the roof, officials there said.
Most of the damage and clean-up efforts were focused on clearing trees and power lines out of the roads, said Glenn Jacobs, mayor of Knox County, according to New York Times.
“It was pretty significant in areas, unfortunately,” Jacobs said of the damage. He said some homes had porches ripped off, and at least one had a hole in the roof where a tree came through it.
In Florence, Ala, a 28-year-old man died after he was struck by lightning in a parking lot in the city, about 60 miles west of Huntsville, local police said. And in Anderson, S.C., a 15-year-old boy was killed when a large tree fell and struck him, according to local fire officials.
In Pennsylvania, a person was injured when a tree fell on the car they were in, according to the preliminary reports. In Virginia, officials rescued a woman who was trapped inside her home after a tree fell on it, as per New York Times.
Some of the worst-hit areas were along the Mason-Dixon line and the southern Appalachians, said David Roth, a meteorologist with the Weather Service.
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