Weather threat continues as hard-hit Bucks County recovers from storms

75756A5E-120A-4932-810C-2FD980DB785E
By KYW Newsradio 1060

Related

DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — The weather threat continues Thursday afternoon even as cleanup begins from severe storms Wednesday night. One of the areas hardest hit is Doylestown.
Massive trees were thrown to the ground on East Court street, bringing down power lines with them. 

This downed tree is right next to Linden Middle School in Doylestown, which is closed today. Doyle, Lenape, Pine Run and CB West are also closed. All other schools in CB South are on a two hour delay pic.twitter.com/KjMAu6LrAj

— Mike Dougherty (@MicDougherty) May 30, 2019

PECO is reporting about 6,000 customers without power in Bucks County, about 7,000 in Montgomery County, and about 1,000 in Philadelphia.

Because of the outages, Buckingham, Doyle, Linden, Lenape, Pine Run, and CB West schools are closed in the Central Bucks County School District. All other district schools will operate on a two-hour delayed schedule.

One man said he remembers the storm vividly. 

"It's interesting the amount of prayers you can do when you're in the midst of life or death," he said. "Only trees were lost."

Despite all the damage, there are no reported injuries. Not among humans, anyway."I did encounter some squirrels who got pretty impacted from the storm," he said.  

East Court Street in Doylestown is closed, for obvious reasons pic.twitter.com/KBg0Ic9qyc

— Mike Dougherty (@MicDougherty) May 30, 2019

Resident Matt Davies said he didn't notice the severity uptown, where he was a bit more protected. "It's pretty amazing all over town, how much was destroyed," he said.

Theodore Ottey said he couldn't believe his eyes.

"I never saw so much rain come down at once," he said. "I lived in Florida for a number of years, and we got some powerful rains in Florida. But I never saw so hard as last night."

Doylestown Mayor Ron Strauss says they will work as quickly as possible to clean up, but they have a lot of damage to deal with:

"Fairly widespread, lots and lots of trees, property damage," he said. "Thankfully no one was injured as best we know. One house was knocked off its foundation, and they may be totally destroyed as a result of that. The other damage was to cars."

Strauss says it will be at least a couple of days before everything is back to normal.

The National Weather Service predicts a slight risk of severe thunderstorms capable of producing damaging gusts of wind. And tornadoes are possible from the Ohio Valley to the Mid-Atlantic.