high winds power outage washington dc mar 2 2018
© WTOP / Neal AugensteinA tree knocked down by the wind at Queen Street and Ferry Road, pulling down power lines and a pole in Leesburg, Virginia.

Winds toppled trees and power lines, leaving hundreds of thousands of customers without power Friday. The damage prompted Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan to both declare states of emergency.

Damaging winds with some gusts topping 70 mph toppled trees and power lines, leading to major power outages and travel delays across the D.C. area.

As of 11:50 p.m. Friday, more than 600,000 customers in the D.C. area were without power. The strong winds are complicating efforts to restore power, officials with local power companies say, and it may take a while to turn the lights back on.


The effects of those severe winds prompted both Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan to declare states of emergency.

Friday afternoon, Amtrak announced that all service along the Northeast Corridor was being suspended for Friday, one of several major travel disruptions Friday spurred by the severe winds.

A high wind warning is in effect for the D.C. area until 6 a.m. on Saturday. The National Weather Service warned of sustained winds of 30 to 40 mph, with isolated gusts exceeding 80 mph. The gusty winds, which are part of a tail end of a powerful storm that had stalled off the Northeast coast, are expected to last throughout the day and into the evening Friday.

The National Weather Service said the winds at Dulles International Airport gusted to 71 mph shortly after 11:30 a.m. Friday, rivaling the wind gusts at the airport during the 2012 derecho. That was the strongest wind gust felt in Northern Virginia during the first part of the day Friday.

In D.C., the strongest wind gusts were 66 mph, recorded at both Catholic University and American University Friday morning (Gusts of 58 mph hit both the National Mall and the U.S. Capitol).

In suburban Maryland, the strongest wind gusts were 69 in Gaithersburg in Montgomery County; and 67 mph in Upper Marlboro in Prince George's County.

Severe winds early Friday afternoon at Dulles caused air traffic controllers to be evacuated from the airport's FAA tower, but the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority said that would not affect flight safety. Air traffic controllers briefly evacuated to a shorter ramp tower, causing a brief ground stop around noon. Flight delays persisted because of the windy conditions.

In addition to the power outages, the winds sent trees and branches crashing into homes and roadways: A 100-year-old woman in Kensington, Maryland, suffered serious injuries overnight when a tree crashed into her house. And a driver was critically injured when a tree partially crushed his car in Northwest D.C. Friday afternoon.

There were also reports of multiple tree branches blocking roads across Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland. Fairfax County police said an officer was injured by a falling tree Friday morning while responding to weather-related incident. The officer was taken to the hospital and was expected to be OK.

The windstorm made driving around the region difficult at times. There were several road closures due to downed trees.

Mark Brady, a spokesman with the Prince George's County Fire Department, said they had responded to 600 incidents between midnight and 3 p.m. Friday - most of them wind-related. The department typically responds to a total of 400 incidents in a full 24-hour shift.

The wild, whipping winds also spurred all major school systems in the D.C. area to close their doors.

Power outages

As of about 11:50 p.m. Friday, an estimated 600,000 customers were without power in the D.C. area.

Dominion Energy in Northern Virginia reported more than 192,000 customers without power, with about 110,000 outages in Fairfax County alone.

"What we're finding is that as soon as we get power on in some location, we're starting to see outages elsewhere," said Le-Ha Anderson, a manager with Dominion Energy.

The strong winds also make it extremely difficult for crews to safely restore power in some cases.

"I would say that we should expect there maybe some lengthier power outages than we're accustomed to, but that is in the hopes of keeping people safe," Anderson said. "We will do our best to get up into the bucket trucks to climb the poles, but we also need to make sure our crews are safe."

BGE reported around 138,000 outages across Maryland, including Prince George's, Montgomery, Howard, Baltimore, Calvert, Carroll and Anne Arundel counties. BGE officials said in terms of outages, Friday's was the worst storm since 2012.

As of about 8 p.m., Pepco reported about 216,000 customers were without power in D.C., Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

"It's going to be an ongoing event," said Pepco spokesman Marcus Beal. "We'll respond really to each individual that we get, take care of that and then really it's a matter of responding as quickly as we can to the next outage."

Beal said crews are currently responding to outages. However, they will suspend operations if the winds pick up and crews think it is unsafe outside.

Read more here.

WTOP's Jack Moore, Jack Pointer, Patrick Roth, Teta Alim and Abigail Constantino contributed to this report.