Two people have drowned after their vehicles were caught in flash floods that struck Oklahoma Wednesday.
The victims became trapped in their cars in separate incidents after slow-moving thunderstorms washed out dozens of roads in the south of the state. The latest deaths come a mother and child drowned in Oklahoma and three people were killed in weather-related incidents in Pennsylvania in the last week.
And there are warnings of more bad weather to come. Thunderstorms and heavy rain are expected to continue into Friday across parts of the Southern Plains, and “will also spread into the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys on Thursday” warned the National Weather Service.
One of the most recent Oklahoma casualties was a man whose vehicle was swept off a Pottawatomie County highway, said Sheriff Freeland Wood.
“My deputy went in to try and save him, and he got caught up in the same mess,” Wood told The Associated Press. The deputy was treated at a local hospital and later released.
Have you been impacted by the floods? Get in touch at madeline.sherratt@independent.co.uk
The other drowning took place in neighboring Lincoln County after a driver’s vehicle got trapped in floodwaters along a highway northwest of Prague, Oklahoma Highway Patrol spokesperson Sarah Stewart said.
Many other drivers have been rescued from the floodwaters and local residents have been forced to evacuate their homes as water surged into their properties.
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol shared video footage of the extensive flooding, stating that “with saturated ground, all the rain will immediately go to runoff, causing more flooding across the Flood Watch area. Turn Around, Don’t Drown!”
Residents are expected to bear the brunt of more flooding on Thursday evening, as “another complex of rain and storms is expected to move across Oklahoma and north Texas overnight,” the US National Weather Service for Norman, Oklahoma, stated on social media Wednesday night. “Some storms could be severe,” they warned.
The slow-moving thunderstorms have drenched Oklahoma for over a week. A woman and a 12-year-old boy drowned in Moore, a suburb outside Oklahoma City, on Easter Saturday.
Oklahoma City saw 12.5 inches of rain in April – the wettest for the month on record – topping the previous 11.91 inches set 80 years ago in 1947, reported News9.
Texas has also been affected by the downpours. In the Dallas area, departures were grounded at Dallas Love Field and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport because of thunderstorms. Hundreds of flights were canceled at DFW International Airport and dozens more at Love Field, according to FlightAware.
A powerful storm Tuesday night also knocked out power to more than 425,000 customers in Pennsylvania and 40,000 more in Ohio, according to PowerOutage.us. Neighboring states reported thousands of outages. About 300,000 Pennsylvania customers and nearly 19,000 in Ohio were without power late Wednesday. A spokesperson for Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Light called the storm’s damage “unprecedented” for knocking out electricity, toppling trees and snapping power poles.
A Pennsylvania man was electrocuted on Tuesday evening while trying to extinguish a mulch fire near a utility pole as severe weather hit the State College area, police said. The 22-year-old man died at the scene. State College police said they believe the man’s death to be storm-related.
In Pittsburgh, first responders were called to the South Side Slopes area for reports of a person electrocuted by live wires, and that person died on the scene, according to the Pittsburgh Public Safety Department. The department urged residents to use extreme caution when moving through the city, citing multiple hazards such as downed trees and possible live wires.
Allegheny County officials confirmed that a 67-year-old man was killed by a fallen tree at a home in Ross Township, just outside Pittsburgh.
Associated Press contributed to this report
