COLUMBUS – It has been a rough couple of days in Ohio, as Buckeye State residents have been forced to contend with storms, heat, even an earthquake.
Central Ohio was spared the worst of early-morning storms Thursday and Friday, though AEP reported more than 6,000 customers without power Friday morning, about 2,000 of them in the Newark area, following.
As of 4:30 a.m. Friday, more than 250,000 FirstEnergy customers in northeast Ohio were without power after a weather system moved through, prompting storm warnings in Marion, Mount Vernon and Mansfield, as well as other locations in north central and northeastern Ohio.
Police say 10 people were rescued on a section of I-90 in Lakewood on Wednesday night after their vehicles got stuck in water that reached to the windows in heavy rain, Capt. Gary Stone said.
“It was a bad mess down there,” Stone said, noting that while Lakewood is often hit by bad storms coming off of Lake Erie, this kind of flooding was unheard of.
Up to 8 inches of rain also hit some areas of north-central Ohio, according to Brian Mitchell with the National Weather Service in Cleveland. The northeast part of the state saw at least 5 inches from midday Wednesday into Thursday morning, with winds reaching up to 60 mph in some areas.
Lorain County, which received around 6 inches of rain, canceled its county fair Thursday due to “storms, flooding, closed roads and damage.”
As if that wasn’t enough, the U.S. Geological Survey says a 2.3-magnitude earthquake was recorded around 8:45 Thursday morning near the Lake Couty and Ashtabula County line. The tremor was approximately four miles deep.
No injuries were reported.