Derecho Leaves a Million Without Power as Ohio Declares Emergency and Flash Flood Emergencies Hit Indiana
A 300-mile line of storms tore from northeast Iowa into northern Indiana on Tuesday, and the water it left behind is still rising. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has declared a state of emergency in two counties, the Ohio National Guard's High Water Rescue Unit is deployed, one village of 1,500 was reduced to a single usable road, and forecasters issued flash flood emergencies in southeast Indiana this morning as a second round moved over ground that cannot take any more rain.
Here is what happened, what is still coming today, and the one consequence of this storm that most homeowners will not see until their basement is already wet.
A derecho, not just a thunderstorm
The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center classified Tuesday's system as a derecho — a long-lived, fast-moving line of storms that produces widespread straight-line wind damage rather than isolated gusts. This one delivered wind gusts over 75 mph across a 300-mile stretch from northeast Iowa to northern Indiana, with hurricane-force gusts over 90 mph in parts of Chicago and over 80 mph in Columbus, Ohio. A weather station in Gary, Indiana recorded a 99 mph gust.
The National Weather Service has so far confirmed two tornadoes in Illinois — in southern Cook County and eastern Will County — both with damage consistent with EF-1 intensity. More are likely to be confirmed later in the week once survey teams can reach the damage.
At least two people were killed. In Geneva Township in Jennings County, Indiana, a four-year-old child died Tuesday afternoon after a tree fell on a house; the 911 call came in around 3:30 p.m. and responders found the child dead at the scene. In Roseville, Ohio, a resident suffering a medical emergency died because first responders could not reach the house through flooded roads. Separately, 16 incarcerated people were hospitalized after lightning struck the Grafton Reintegration Center southwest of Cleveland as they returned from an evening meal.
More than a million homes lost power
By Tuesday evening, PowerOutage.us was reporting more than one million homes and businesses without power across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. Illinois, Indiana and Ohio alone accounted for more than 900,000 of them. Lake and Porter counties in Indiana and Will County south of Chicago were among the hardest hit.
That number matters more than it looks. Hold onto it — we will come back to it.
Ohio: the flooding arrived after the wind
Southeastern Ohio got the worst of the rainfall. NWS Charleston reported that radar and automated gauges indicated 5 to 8 inches of rain had fallen since midnight across central Perry County and northwestern Morgan County by late Tuesday afternoon. Dayton set a daily rainfall record of 2.07 inches, breaking a mark that had stood since 1915.
Gov. DeWine signed a proclamation Tuesday afternoon declaring a state of emergency in Perry and Muskingum counties and activating the Ohio National Guard. The Guard's High Water Rescue Unit was sent to Roseville and Crooksville, and Ohio Department of Natural Resources swift-water crews began pulling people out of flooded homes and vehicles.
Roseville, a village of roughly 1,500 that straddles the Perry–Muskingum county line, was nearly isolated, with only one road reported usable. State officials urged residents who had stayed to leave while an evacuation route still existed. Flooding was also reported in New Lexington, Somerset, Crooksville, Junction City, Glouster, Trimble and Jacksonville, and roads remained closed across Athens, Morgan, Perry and Washington counties into Wednesday morning.
DeWine's warning is the line worth repeating: "Even after the storms exit the state, flooding will remain a serious concern."
Today's threat: Indiana, Ohio, and the central Appalachians
Wednesday brought a second round onto saturated ground, which is the setup that turns heavy rain into flash flooding. Forecasters issued flash flood emergencies in southeast Indiana Wednesday morning — the highest-level flash flood alert the NWS issues, reserved for situations with a severe threat to human life.
NWS Wilmington issued a flash flood warning for Franklin and Ripley counties in Indiana, where 2 to 4 inches of rain fell, with a flash flood watch covering the entire Cincinnati tri-state area until 11 p.m. Wednesday. Named communities at risk included Batesville, Versailles, Milan, Osgood, Sunman, Metamora and Holton, along with Interstate 74 at State Route 101.
Further east, NWS Blacksburg has a flood watch up for northwest North Carolina, southwest and west central Virginia, and southeast West Virginia. If you are not sure what separates a watch from a warning from an emergency, and what each one should actually make you do, we broke that down in our guide to NWS flood alerts.
You can check live watches, warnings and river gauges for your own county on our free Flood Watch tool.
The part most people miss: no power means no sump pump
Come back to that million-customer outage number, because it is the most underrated flood risk in this entire event.
A sump pump is an electrical appliance. When the grid goes down, it stops. And the storm that knocks out your power is very often the same storm that is about to send several inches of rain into the ground around your foundation. The wind arrives first, the pump dies, and then the water shows up to a basement with no defense running — sometimes hours after the sky has cleared and it feels like the event is over.
This is why utility crews restoring power and homeowners bailing out basements are usually working the same 48 hours. It is also why "the storm has passed" is a bad reason to stand down. Groundwater keeps rising after the rain stops, creeks crest downstream hours or days later, and a dead pump does not care that the sun is out.
If you are in the outage footprint right now, three things are worth doing before dark:
- Assume the pump is not running. Move anything you care about off the basement floor now, not after you see water. Electronics, documents, photographs, tools, anything with a motor.
- Find where water actually enters. For most homes it is a walkout door, a garage threshold, a window well or a basement stairwell — not the whole perimeter. Protecting the two or three real entry points is far more effective than trying to ring the house.
- Do not drive it. Most flood deaths happen in vehicles. Roads across four Ohio counties are still closed this morning for exactly this reason.
Where StormBag fits
The problem with traditional sandbags during an event like this is not that they do not work — it is that they require sand, a shovel, a truck and a healthy back, and the sand piles run out roughly the moment a flash flood watch is issued. Tuesday's timeline is the argument: the derecho gave people minutes, not days.
StormBag ships flat and dry at about one pound per bag, so a case can sit on a basement shelf or in a garage for years without taking up meaningful space. When you need it, submerging a bag in fresh water expands it to roughly 33 pounds and a full 6-inch barrier height in under three minutes — no sand, no shovel, no pre-storm scramble. That is a very different proposition when the alert window is measured in hours.
Two practical notes if you are staging for the rest of this week. Figuring out how many bags a doorway actually needs takes about a minute, and it is worth doing before you buy rather than after. And where you store them matters as much as owning them — our room-by-room staging guide covers keeping them near the entry points they are meant to defend instead of buried in a shed you cannot reach in the rain.
See StormBag pricing and pack sizes, or work through the full flood protection hierarchy if you want the bigger picture on what to do first.
Meanwhile, in the tropics
The Atlantic is getting busier, and none of it is aimed at the Midwest — but it is worth watching if you are on the coast.
In its 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday Tropical Weather Outlook, the National Hurricane Center gave a tropical wave about 950 miles west-southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands an 80 percent chance of development through both 48 hours and seven days, saying a tropical depression will likely form as it moves west to west-northwest across the central tropical Atlantic. A second wave several hundred miles south of Cabo Verde carries a 20 percent chance through 48 hours and 40 percent through seven days.
Tropical Storm Cristobal did form Wednesday, but it is not a land threat. The first NHC advisory placed it near 36.7 North, 43.0 West — about 880 miles west of the Azores — with 45 mph sustained winds, moving east at 25 mph. Slow weakening is forecast and Cristobal is expected to dissipate on Thursday. No coastal watches or warnings are in effect.
The system to actually track is the one at 80 percent. Late-season Atlantic development is the reason the National Hurricane Center keeps repeating that peak hurricane season runs through September, and this week is a reasonable moment for coastal homeowners to check what they already have on hand rather than finding out in a warning.
The short version
A derecho crossed 300 miles of the Midwest Tuesday with gusts to 99 mph, killed at least two people, and cut power to more than a million homes across six states. Southeastern Ohio took 5 to 8 inches of rain, Perry and Muskingum counties are under a state of emergency with the National Guard deployed, and a second round Wednesday produced flash flood emergencies in southeast Indiana. Flood watches extend into the central Appalachians and northwest North Carolina.
If your power is out, treat your sump pump as offline and act accordingly. If it is on, this is a good week to find out where your water actually gets in — and to have something ready that does not require a sand pile at 2 a.m.
