Maryland braces for another day of dangerous heat and storms as thousands remain without power

Baltimore will endure one more day of extreme heat before the blistering high temperatures the city saw this past week break as thousands remain without power. It might be cooler outside this week, but it’s the cool breeze ahead of a storm.

The National Weather Service is keeping its heat advisory in place until 8 p.m. Sunday night as temperatures are expected to reach 96 degrees and heat indices get up to 106 during the day. After 5 p.m. is when the service expects to see the onset of thunderstorms and lightning with 60 to 65 mph winds. Those storms are anticipated to roll over into Monday with additional, scattered chances of rain hanging overhead through the rest of the week.

Reports of incoming storms point to them possibly being the most severe between the afternoon and evening hours Sunday. As rain falls, temperatures will fall into the 70s and 80s. That respite from the heat will last through the week.

This next round of storms follows a powerful thunderstorm Saturday night accompanied by lightning which also caused severe floods and knocked out power for more than thousands in the region. As of Sunday morning, about 50,000 remain without power, according to the Baltimore Gas and Electric outage map.

Light Rail service between Patapsco and Cromwell stations, including service to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, is suspended because of last night’s storms and an ongoing Baltimore Gas and Electric power outage. Cromwell Station is currently inaccessible, and shuttle buses are operating to accommodate passengers.

Dan Hofman, lead meteorologist with NWS said similar to storms experienced on Saturday, there’s a “lot of energy in the atmosphere.”

“Some of these stronger storms, if one happens to go right over your neighborhood, could produce wind gusts of 60 to 65 miles an hour, frequent lightning, and some very heavy rain,” he said. “They may put down a lot of rain, and that could result in some flash flooding.”

The change in weather comes after the city endured a weeklong’s worth of dangerous heat and thunderstorms that impacted Fourth of July festivities and local services.

On Saturday, temperatures in downtown Baltimore broke a heat record at 104. The last time temperatures were close to that hot was in 2002 when the record high was 101 degrees, Hoffman said. It was just one of several heat records to be broken during the first few days of the month.

By the end of the day, the city fire department had responded to 34 heat-related calls. No deaths were reported.

A mighty lightning bolt also may have been the cause of a four-alarm fire at a Sherwin Williams warehouse in Curtis Bay that took dozens of first responders to contain.

The blaze was followed shortly thereafter by another fire that erupted at The Shipyard at Lighthouse Point, a condo complex in Canton.

Baltimore County Fire Department rescued six people after their boat capsized at Hart Miller Island late Saturday night. Crews had responded to “multiple boat incidents throughout the evening.”

First responders and locals were still working to assess the full extent of storm damage on Sunday.

This story has been updated.