High winds knocked out power across parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan on Saturday, leaving hundreds of thousands of customers without electricity, according to an outage tracker. Farther west, at least one person died in a wind-driven wildfire in Nebraska, where officials reported growing burn areas by midday.
The outage picture remained severe late Saturday afternoon, with about 346,000 customers still without power in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide. The winds also left trees down and caused substantial property damage in communities from the Cleveland area through western Pennsylvania, the report said.
The National Weather Service said a 66 mph gust at Pittsburgh International Airport on Friday was the airport’s fourth-strongest gust on record that was not caused by a thunderstorm. Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport saw winds hit 85 mph that afternoon, according to the report.
In Ohio and Pennsylvania, winds damaged structures and toppled trees. The report said winds took down a gas station canopy in New Franklin, Ohio, and an auto parts store sign in Baldwin, Pennsylvania, and that trees and tree limbs fell into or onto homes and cars from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. It also said the roof of a school building in the Chicago suburb of Niles, Illinois, was severely damaged by wind.
The strong winds helped fuel multiple wildfires in Nebraska across the state’s range and grassland, the report said. Officials said one death occurred in Arthur County, though the victim was not immediately identified and the sheriff’s office did not disclose other details.
Separately, state officials dubbed the Morrill County fire, and it had burned at least 735 square miles across four counties by the time of the report. The Nebraska Emergency Management Agency said at least 12 structures had been destroyed, and Gov. Jim Pillen toured areas affected by the fire.
Chelle Ladely, of Sidney, said her home was currently safe, about 40 miles south of the nearest fire. “Smoke is filling the air, and at night I can see the burn of the fires on the horizon,” Ladely said, describing how local farmers and her father’s work as a crop agronomist were tied to efforts to support firefighters, including gathering water trucks and supplying bottled water and food for volunteer firemen trying to extinguish the blazes.
The report said strong winds had kept firefighters from containing any of the fires. It said several other wildfires pushed by winds of up to 65 mph burned another 225 square miles by midday Saturday, for a total of nearly 938 square miles.
In Chicago, thousands of revelers attended St. Patrick’s Day events including the city’s namesake river dyed bright green and a downtown parade, despite forecasts for snow and stiff winds that pushed “feels-like” temperatures well below freezing. The broader weather system also included heavy rains in Hawaii and was followed by an outlook for triple-digit heat in Phoenix and a return of winter cold in the Midwest and Northeast.
AccuWeather warned of a “potent triple-threat March megastorm” from Sunday into Monday. John Feerick of AccuWeather said, “It’s definitely a very active weather weekend, that’s for sure,” and that it was “a highly amplified pattern, which means you get a lot of extremes,” adding that some areas along the Wisconsin-Iowa border might see ice as travel conditions become dangerous in parts of the Upper Midwest.
The report said several Minnesota cities declared snow emergencies starting Sunday, with what could be the season’s largest snowfall expected to hit. It said Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula were also in the crosshairs, and that Chicago was forecast to approach the single digits Fahrenheit by Tuesday, with Minneapolis seeing lows around zero Fahrenheit (minus 18 C).
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