Storm leaves thousands without power

(WTNH) - Thousands of homes lost power as a wave of violent weather rolled across Connecticut late Wednesday night and early this morning.

As of 2:30pm Connecticut Light & Power reported over 4,500 outages, and United Illuminating reported another 31. At one point, over 20,000 people were off-line.

"Many reports of trees down and hail over 1.5" from last night," Storm Team 8 Meteorologist Gil Simmons said.

Some examples from earlier in the morning; In Branford, a tree fell and blocked South Montowese St. near the Elks lodge. In Suffield, A section of Route 168 near South Stone Road was closed, as was a section of Route 69 in Bristol was closed at West St.

Lightning was believed responsible for fires reported in Chester.

As quickly as the storm moved in, it rolled out of the state and took the hot, humid air with it. Cities and towns that saw temperatures in the 90s Wednesday will see highs in the 70s Thursday. "Much cooler today folks," Simmons said.

Click here to check the Storm Team 8 forecast.

The weather has not been very friendly to the Friends of Hammonasset this spring. The group sells plants to raise money for Hammonasset State Park and once again they have to clean up after a storm.

"This is the second this month. We had a huge white tent and that completely uplifted and came down so now we went with the smaller tent. I'm really very surprised this morning," said Anita Bennett, Friends of Hammonasset.

In the campground of the park, it was anything but a day at the beach for campers. Wind blew an awning up on top of a trailer and blew down Noreen Flowers' tent. Fortunately, she had a bad feeling about this storm when it started, so she wasn't in the tent when it collapsed.

"I don't know, it was like something went right through me. I woke up and the whole sky was light. I grabbed a couple things and got in my car and that's where I slept until 3:00," Noreen said.

Fire gutted a two car garage on River Lane in Deep River. Firefighters from four towns responded and had to rescue two people. It looks like lightning hit a tree next to a garage and the garage caught fire. The garage was close enough to the house that it melted the siding on the house. Firefighters helped two people escape that house, but then three firefighters needed medical care themselves. One twisted an ankle, two were treated for heat exhaustion.

Over in Milford a tree went crashing down on a house. The family says they got dressed in the middle of the night and ran out because they didn't know what happened. "I saw a tree coming at me and I said to my wife get dressed and get out of the house," said Jack Hyatt of Milford.

The tree weighed an estimate of 10-tons.