Five die as US hit by freak storms

More than two million people across the eastern US lost power after violent storms and five people died, including a 90-year-old woman asleep in bed when a tree slammed into her home, police have said.

Washington DC faced the bulk of power cuts that were reported from Indiana to New Jersey.

On Friday, the nation’s capital reached 40C – topping a record of 38C set in 1934.

Fallen trees were blamed on two deaths in Virginia.

As well as the un-named 90-year-old woman who died, a man driving his car was also pronounced dead. Authorities identified him as Khiet Nguyen, 27.

Two young cousins in New Jersey were killed when a tree fell on their tent while camping.

Police in Maryland said today that a man was killed when a tree fell onto his car.

High winds also toppled three cargo trucks on Interstate 75 in Ohio.

Early thisy morning, electricity service provider Pepco was reporting 406,000 power cuts in the District of Columbia and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland.

“We have more than half our system down,” said Pepco spokeswoman Myra Oppel. “This is definitely going to be a multi-day outage.”

Amtrak suspended its service from Washington DC to Philadelphia as a result of the problems.