lightning. thousands of strikes of lightning within ten minutes. 1100 lightning strikes in five minutes across the area. here's where it is right now. the district, fairfax county and montgomery county have seen the worst of the storm. next it is prince george's county and southern maryland. if you live in southern maryland you are under the gun for the severe storms to move through and the strongest winds. buoy you are seeing the strongest winds. if you live in glen burnie and annapolis expect this to come through in the next 10 to 30 minutes. down south along 301, brandy wine, la plata you are seeing the winds now. the winds precede the rain. it may not be raining and the winds will gust all of a sudden. and it could be 60 to 80 miles

an hour. we have seen numerous reports of trees down across the area. downtown frederick county, maryland a lot of road closures there and numerous trees down in loudoun county, montgomery county and fairfax county. if you live in st. mariy's county expect your power to go out. 100,000 people are now without power. i expect that to climb and maybe double through the rest of the night tonight. that is a huge scenario playing out here. not only do we have the strong storms but behind them we still have the heat. these storms are not going to bust the heat in the region. is it going to be back during the day tomorrow. even though we see the storms move out and rain move through, slightly cooler air move through we see the temperatures move back up to 100 degrees once again during the day tomorrow. as we mentioned some of the areas affected branny wine,

waldorf, la plata, expect the storms in the next 20 minutes. up 301 here is the line again. you can see it in buoy making its way across crofton in anne arundel council. but this is just one big line that continues to move across the region. up to howard county and all along i-95 we were sitting here in northwest washington watching this thing come through. our winds were 50 to 60 miles an hour. we have a tree out in front of our offices and there are numerous trees down across the region. you can see the area in yellow, prince george's county, the district, fairfax, charles and st. mary's and king george and the eastern shore, all of you under a severe thunderstorm warning. a severe thunderstorm warning but that doesn't go far enough. but we see the winds upwards of

hurricane strength and they will move through in the next couple hours of so. in about an hour this will cross the chesapeake and be out of our hair. it will be out of here. we will see residual rain out of this. it will be making its way in from the west. in loudoun county you are seeing rain but have seen the worst ott in western montgomery urbanna and frederick county you have seen the worst of the storm. it is making its way east. under a severe thunderstorm warning until midnight tonight. they are extremely fast movers and will knock down trees and take out power. if you are in southern maryland you have not seen the storms yet. get the flashlights ready. i think you will have power outage in the next couple days. we have more warnings coming in. we have a flash flood warning for frederick county, maryland until 1:15.

let me show you a couple other things. i'm going to zoom in to exactly where this is right here. this is tyson's corner right now. let's show you our weather camera right on the front lawn here. this is a tree that is down. you can see the car with the blinking lights. this is between us and homeland security across the way here. not exactly sure which employees' cars those are. and now let's look at video from tyson's corner that was shot just a little while ago. the storms came in with the 50, 60, 70-mile-an-hour winds and a ton of lightning. i have seen numerous people call. they have been on my twitter account and facebook saying i have never seen lightning like this. i counted in ten minutes and this was just in frederick county maryland an hour ago, 1100 lightning strikes in ten minutes. that warning if we go back to the radar includes the eastern

shore. so if you are thinking we will head out to ocean city or the beaches right now you want to give that a couple of hours. not a good idea to do that. this severe thunderstorm warning lasts probably -- let me check the time on this to see when it is. it is through 12:15 through caroline county and the eastern shore. the bay bridge will be hit next including annapolis. you don't want to be on the bay bridge with 50, 60-mile-an-hour winds. let's show you where the heaviest rain is. you may see some small hail e here. we saw 3/4 inch hail. we got a photo of that. in greenbelt seeing the revy rain in buoy, crofton, the heavy rain and the wind. crownsville maryland is about likely to see that wind in your area. arnold and annapolis in the next 15 minutes.

back down 301 in calavert county and around deal and shadyside you get that in the next 20 minutes. but back to the west, andrews air force base, clinton, brandy wine seeing the heavy rain and winds gusting about 40 to 50 miles an hour. jim and wendy we were outside. i knew this was coming through here. we took you out there and you said it all. >> i have to tell you something i don't know the last time i watched a co-worker run through the newsroom telling everyone to follow him because there is something they need to see. we run out on the loading dock and as i mentioned to you, what was as impressive as the winds that were just roaring through right there, was the sound of it. it was absolutely incredible. but what i want to ask you when we were on at 6:00 you were talking about this storm and i think it was just east of chicago at that time. unusual for something to move that quickly isn't it?

>> in a situation like this when you're got heat this expansive. it has been covering the eastern half of the nation. we saw the storms form. there were two storms in chicago and we knew those storms would develop in that hot air. they moved through indiana. we saw a 91-mile-an-hour gust in fort wayne, indiana. and we saw a bigger line make its way through portions of ohio and that line continued to grow. this is a mesoscale convection. i want to show how it made its way through the area. watch up toward chicago. watch the storms just move on down and create a bow. you can see the front portion the bow, it should be here in the next half hour to 45 minutes but we do continue to get

warnings and watch the storm. the highest areas the biggest areas of impact anne arundel county, st. mary's county. everybody else is seeing the winds. the if you live in the northern neck, this will knock down trees and take down power. so please make sure you're ready for that. >> doug, i have a question for you, you are talking about the heat is going to return tomorrow. tonight, you have a lot of brides. one of our producers is getting married tomorrow. is the heat tomorrow once it climbs back up to 100 degrees is it going to trigger any more storms tomorrow? >> i tell you what, wendy. let's go back to graphics 29 again. this is one of our systems. you see the storm system that just came through us. take a look back up to chicago. there is another area of storms, starting to form there. and, yes, i do think we are going to see more storms during

the day tomorrow and we could see more severe storms. will it be a line like this? possibly. that's the kind of storms you expect with the intense heat like this. but this area will be through tomorrow. tomorrow morning it will start off muggy and tomorrow afternoon we could see more storms in the area. >> we'll get back to you in a second. right now we have the assistant chief of fire and rescue in montgomery county on the line. can you hear us? >> doing well. >> i'm curious how you are. can you give us an idea what the situation is in the county? >> i'm up in the that nacomas a. we have a lot of calls sporadic throughout the county in rockville, bethesda and old georgetown road and near argyle. we have a lot of calls for trees across wires. we have calls for some trees or branches on to homes.

and it's -- seems the storm is marching through pretty quickly. we have had no injuries at this time as it relates to the storm. and the advice we'd like to put out there is please don't go outside and look around to see what's happening. there may be live wires down. if you don't have power and you're using a generator, you know, we have only lost power for less than an hour or so. there is no real reason to fire up the generators yet. there is carbon monoxide issues and back feed issues. let the power companies get in there to restore the power. was fast-moving through the . we are running the usual calls we would see with high winds, heavy rain, wires down and branches or trees on homes. but there have been no injuries thus far. >> do you have any word on whether the roads have been closed because of wires or trees or whatever? >> officially no. but we had a -- we had a report

of a house fire which turned out to be not that. it was just a tree down in the smoke tree road area in the potomac area and some of the response apparatus was calling back in and saying we can't. there's trees across the road. as far as definitive as saying this road or that road, no. there are a lot in the upcounty that we do have confirmed trees across and crews helping to clear those open. but again, it's so fresh into the storm, it is nighttime, obviously. but we're going to see branches and stuff. if you are out traveling, be careful. >> because this is moving so quickly do you think that will help you on the backside of this you will have the heat but may not have the drama and you think you will be able to get out

there and -- >> we'll probably start to conduct windshield surveys. we'll have units out in the neighborhood. right now we are operating under condition red. we are sending as many pieces of apparatus out as we can. our 911 call center and dispatching center is receiving an inordinately high number of calls at this time. once we clear the condition red and the large number of calls that we're receiving then we'll go back and begin our windshield survey. if that's not done tonight we will do it at first break of day tomorrow when it is safe and leave tonight's response to emergency responses. >> all right. scott graham with the montgomery county fire and rescue. we appreciate you taking the time. thank you. >> doug can we assume for people in montgomery county and the

district and fairfax that it's pretty much out of it now? >> yeah. we can start to assess the damage across that area and notice the trees down. we were showing the live shot out in tyson's corner a minute ago. one thing you notice is we don't have the rain falling any more, not the heavy rain. and notice the tree, that tree is no longer moving. you don't see the wind any more. just a light breeze. but here in northwest, pretty much the same thing. you see a bit of wind and lightning out there. but the flag is on the -- just on the side of the pole. we're not talking about the winds gusting any more. if you live in the district or fairfax county or montgomery county or frederick county, maryland or to the south, you are going to be a-okay. around the capital there is wind and rain falling. and tons and tons of lightning. i mean just look at this lightning that we've got across

the area. this lightning is simply amazing as it moves across the region with this line that is coming through region. look at the lightning all the way across the area. all of the storms producing tons of lightning. tens of thousands of lightning strikes per hour as it continues down to the east. you notice the areas in yellow where we have the severe storm warning in effect. in the district you are in there. but don't worry. you no longer have the storms to worry about here. it is in st. mary's county where you will see the problems and the eastern shore. in lees burg still seeing light rain. frederick county, maryland and warrenton you are seeing the light rain. this is the area under the gun. you can see how fast these are moving here just over the last 15 minutes. here it was in bowie and now it is in crofton coming to

annapolis. annapolis you will start to see the winds in your area. this is a heavily treed area. 97 a lot of trees alongside 97. down route 2. tons of trees here. i wouldn't be surprised to see route 2 see a lot of trees down there. and in behirandywine now in sunderland around prince frederick you are seeing the strong winds and very, very heavy rain. and we'll continue to see that for the next couple hours. but is it moving so fast that in about the next half hour to 45 minutes we will be done with this storm. then we can turn to those without power and the heat. the heat tomorrow will be around 100 degrees. forecasting a near record once again during the day tomorrow. today we hit 104 which is an all time record high temperature for the month of june. tomorrow we could be close to that but could be a couple of

degrees cooler. it will not feel cooler. will the rain cool us down? no. will it make us feel more muggy? yes. the dew points have gone up now because we saw the rain. as you walk outside you can feel the muggy air that is sitting there. >> doug, you are talking about the lightning strikes can i assume not are all cloud to ground strikes? >> not here, jim. these are all -- everything we see here it's going to take me a second. all of these lightning strikes are cloud to ground. these are not cloud to cloud. our system will not pick up cloud to cloud lightning. we are seeing cloud to ground lightning. you see all those lightning bolts you know we are seeing a lot of lightning out there. and hopefully they are not hitting anybody's houses or anything else out there. just stay indoors tonight. >> do we get storms like this because -- for some reason these

hot temperatures create energy or something like that? how come the storm is so violent? >> 100%. you talk about that heat and heat is the fuel for a storm. so you need to have some kind of heat. you need to have some kind of factor coming through the area. and a lot of times it's a cold front. in this sense it's that mesoscale convective system that we talked about. and when it hits an area where you've got dew points in the 70s. a lot of moisture in the atmosphere and a lot of heat in the atmosphere, that heat could just be used as a term for energy. that's what we had in the atmosphere. it creates an extremely explosives atmosphere and it doesn't take a lot to get strong to very severe thunderstorms. that's what we saw today and what we saw in the midwest. ohio and indiana, 850,000 people without power. you can see right now. is that a live shot in tyson's

corner? it looks like we lost the lights in tyson's corner. they may be without power in their area. we are going to see this scenario play out. if you are in southern maryland make sure you are ready for your power to go out. we have been saying this all night long. >> doug, we're just hearing that 439,000 customers. 439,000 customers in northern virginia alone are without power on a hot night which means no air-conditioning. we are going to take jackie bensen is on the phone in landover, maryland. what are the conditions around you right now? >> reporter: hello, my friend the conditions are pretty bad and worse about 20, 25 minutes ago. this was unbelievable. what happened was we are sitting outside prince george's county police headquarters. the winds come up, trees are going sideways.

dust and bits of paper is moving like i have never seen it. i have covered hurricanes in florida. all of a sudden every light you could see anywhere, including the lights in the police headquarters building just went out. every traffic light, every street light every light in every house just boom they were gone. as result of the storms that are coming through here we have a report of a collapse of a gas station roof on annapolis road in bladensburg. public safety, fire department is busy now. there is a report of a house on fire possibly struck by lightning. there are metro stations the southern avenue metro station is without power or was as of about 15 minutes ago. the sky is covered with lightning flash after lightning flash. it is green at times and it is very, very alarming. i can tell you there are trees

down everywhere. my friends back in the studio everyone is going to need to be very, very careful when you go home tonight and be prepared for a long trip. reporting live from landover. >> we appreciate that, jackie. and we want to thank all of you still watching who still have power and say god bless you you still do and hopefully you'll have it for a while. this was a really rough one tonight. and we were standing outside ourselves before we went on the air. you and i both noted had never seen wind come through that quickly and loud. >> and i said i have been in a million hurricanes and haven't seen wind like that. and the sound of it. it sounded like a train. doug came running through the newsroom and said follow me. we went running out to the loading dock. he opened the door and the gust of wind that hit us. i thought we were about to be in

a tornado. doug, that was amazing. and you called that what kind of winds? >> these are straight-line winds. just the other day we saw that incredible storm in bladensburg with 80 to 100-mile-an-hour winds. we have confirmed reports from fairfax county and prince george's county of 75 to 80-mile-an-hour winds. those are hurricane force. i have covered many hurricanes. this is hurricane-force winds coming through the area. and again, calavert county, st. mary's county, you are the ones right now under the gun from this storm. once again if you live in this area and right now most of the storm and we will zoom in here. i might have to step away for just a second. but annapolis is seeing the strongest winds right now. selby on the bay you are seeing the strongest winds now. but they have already moved through calavert county and

moving to the chesapeake. st. mary's county will lose power. once again just know that. we have pepco on the phone right now. back to you guys. >> myra opal is with us on the phone from pepco. can you tell us what the situation is as regards to power? >> we have about 326,000 customers and 51,000 out in the district, 175,000 out in montgomery county and about 100,000 out in prince george's county. >> 100,000 in prince george's county. >> what is your challenge tonight then? >> it's assessment at this point. what we had crews working on, heat-related damage and outages. the crews were sheltering during the storm and what we first turned to is assessing the damage to see what we are looking at out there.

>> at this point you can't guess how long people will be without power? >> i think it will be safe to say it will be multiday. >> multidays. that is a rough one with 100 degree temperatures coming. thank you very much we appreciate that information. as related to us we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million people if my addition is correct -- half -- 326,000 pepco people, 439,000 in northern virginia. more than half a million people. >> and as jackie was reporting, doug was stalking about all the lightning strikes. they have one house on fire. lightning she was reporting over in prince george's county of the roof of a gas station has collapsed on annapolis road in bladensburg. the metro stations are having issues. it's tough out there. and tough for everyone who just had their power go out. it is going to climb up to 100

degrees tomorrow. and as we heard pepco say it could take a couple of days to get this restored. the winds were to traumatic in a way in terms of what it did to the infrastructure. >> 100%. they are still coming through. the wind reports are continuing to see 70 to 80-mile-an-hour winds in the area. the largest was 82 miles an hour in our area. 76 miles an hour in print george's county. they do continue down to the south. if you live in southern maryland you are under the gone. anne arundel county, the strongest winds are through the area. calavert county and prince george's county it is the heaviest rain. you can see it on i-97. and calavert county all the way down route 2, calavert beach is next. and down in extreme southern

calavert county, the naval air station watch out down here. leonardtown. we will zoom in. valley lee, chesapeake ranch estates. you will see 60, 70, 80-mile-an-hour winds. if you are watching us you still have power right now. you may not have in the next 15 to 20 minutes. biggest thing you can do is get flashlights, make sure you're ready and have a plan for your power to go out. it will most likely go out. you can see where they are making their way through of the last few hours. this is only a three hour loop. a three hour loop. you know how long it takes to drive i-81 and go all the way to route 150. it's a long way and these storms raced across here in a matter of about three hours. you can see the force these

storms moved through. they were moving at 60 miles an hour at times through the area. we'll continue to watch as they move into the atlantic and across into the eastern shore. there are a few of you in the eastern shore that watch us on satellite. if you live in the eastern shore these winds could be stronger for you especially if you live right along the bay here because the bay does not have nearly as much surface friction. it's not going to slow the winds down like trees would. that water will allow the winds to pick back up. we could see damage right here over across the bridge, hemmingways and kent island. so once again we will continue to watch these as they move through the region. but the biggest area, southern st. mary's county is the biggest threat for damage. >> you said the storm is through bowie right? >> yes. but the strongest winds are out of there. >> derick ward is on the phone

with us now. are you seeing any relief? what's the status there? >> well the winds have definitely died down. when the incident first started there was lightning. then winds but no rain. it was erie. strong, strong winds. a lot of leaves and branches blowing around. and then came the rain. be the wind was obviously the biggest part of this. and on the leading edge of this. we lost power i'd say less than two or three minutes into the wind event and now it's just a matter of rain. but we are without power. i did hear from someone on the beltway who said there were trees down in this area here near 214 and the beltway in that general area. so obviously, you know, once the light of day shines on us again we'll be able to assess completely the damage. but high winds first then the rain then the lightning and then

darkness. >> derek, when it was hitting you and i assume you are in the live trucks or in a car what was that like? >> i was at home. i was going to run out to my car to get my rain gear in the car. but i decided against it just because there are a lot of trees in my parking lot. just not wise to run out under trees. i will make the trek out there just so i'll have it so when i come in in the morning. >> hopefully your windows were rolled up? >> yes, they are. >> a reporter is never off duty. thank you, derrick. >> we are pleased to note that as of this point we have no reports of anyone being injured. certainly is it early in reporting all that is going on out there. but there are a lot of people without power. >> we have -- i don't have my

glasses on. >> we have 439,000 in northern virginia. and we have 326,000 out under pepco's jurisdiction. and 100,000 in prince george's county. it's more than a million total we're hearing now and that number is just getting higher. and all of this of course because of a storm that came through here very, very quickly. we did have warning. you have been checking this all day long. >> we talked about this at 4:00, 5:00 and again at 6:00. and you know, kim martucci was helping me this evening. when you see this kind of a storm moving into an area having record heat. we set an all time monthly

record with 104 degrees but the dew points were at 70. that is moist air ready for something to come in and send it into the atmosphere and get the storms going. that's what we have seen out there today. want to show you where the strongest winds, southern st. mary's county. just got reports of extreme wind there. waldorf, 71-mile-an-hour winds. you can expect the same in chesapeake ranch estates. if you live in southern st. mary's county along the bay or in the northern neck get ready for the 70 to 80-mile-an-hour winds. they are going to continue to move on through here. i'm going to go back and show you the entire line here. i'm going back in my slide show here. you can see the line sweeping through the area. baltimore with a 66-mile-an-hour wind gust. you see the spin here.

you see a spin here. and that helped to push that whole thing right on through our region. that's why we saw -- another reason we saw the 70, 80-mile-an-hour winds. here is where derrick ward is. the heaviest rain is past bowie. annapolis is seeing the rain but not the winds. i want to show you that line. watch this thunderstorm and all these lightning bolts here. the most in baltimore but still right along the chesapeake bay going to the delmarva and the eastern shore. >> we want to go to shomari stone. we understand he is in fwhnortht bethesda coming to us through skype. >> reporter: i see a lot of people trying to figure out what is going on. the storm came out of nowhere for a lot of folks. everything was calm and all of a

sudden there was a lot of wind, gust gusts, 70 miles an hour. there was a lot of folks running for cover. we were trying to drive you will rock creek park. there were a lot of trees down in the road. also we tried to circle back by the monument on independence avenue -- >> we lost him. >> shomari was on skype but we lost his signal and he is speaking about trees being down in rock creek park which is not a surprise. we assume they are down all over the place. >> i'm back right now. modern technology dealing with skype trying to bring our viewers the latest information. there were a lot of downed trees as you just mentioned throughout rock creek park. we are making a left from

harvard street on to 16th. and my photographer here, what was it like driving through that? >> a complete mess. rain was sideways, branches flying, tents flying. it was a total mess. >> we are hearing a lot of damage in the bethesda area. that's where we're driving in a safe way to bethesda. also, by if you plan on going through independence avenue stay away there are porta johns that are blocking the roadway. >> thank you. and thanks for your advice. no one wants to run into a porta john. not a good idea. doug can i get back to you for a second? we saw your line of the storm line coming through. we saw all the lightning and all of that. we talked about the hook echo

thing with the bow echo. what i have not heard you say is any word about tornados. how come this storm like this didn't create a tornado? >> very good observation. that's the reason why any time you have the bow echoes a lot of times they only push the air out in front of them. that being said, we did have a couple of tornados reported with the storm in ohio and even warnings in northern west virginia and parts of maryland right here. and you notice there is a little spin that right now is around baltimore. but the line itself, that's what we saw, the line itself is just pushing off to the east. you do not see that turning motion within these storms. they are just moving off to the east and those storms allow the winds from aloft -- the winds are 5,000 feet up and moving at 70, 80 miles an hour. they move into that