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LEWISTOWN -- The sun came out and the power stayed off in about 100 homes across four counties in the Juniata Valley Saturday as the weather system previously known as Hurricane Debby finally moved out of the United States.
Overall, Penelec's website reported 2,514 customers out of the more than 2 million served were without power in Pennsylvania and New York, as of Sunday afternoon. However, power had been restored to those previous outages in Mifflin County, according to outage information on Penelec's website.
In Juniata and Snyder counties, PPL stated on Saturday that 24 customers were without power as tree limbs fell on wires to cause outages. By Sunday, that number had dropped to 1 customer, according to their website. That outage was in the Beaver Springs area. There were still outages in the surrounding areas.
PowerOutage.us said there were no outages on Sunday in Mifflin, Juniata or Huntingdon counties, and a total of 14 in Snyder County.
"In the Lewistown area, there were two to three inches of rain, but some spots in central Pennsylvania went over the four-inch mark," Alex DaSilva, lead hurricane expert at AccuWeather in State College, said Sunday afternoon.
"There were quite a lot of power outages because the grounds were so saturated," DaSilva added. "When that happens, you don't need as much wind to topple the trees over."
DaSilva said the rain totals prior to Debby soaked the ground and made the 35- to 40-mile per hour gusts more destructive.
"Normally with dry ground, those 35- to 40-mile per hour gusts normally wouldn't do anything," he explained.
The Juniata River at Lewistown crested at 17.59 feet at 6 a.m. Saturday, the United States Geological Survey reported. By Sunday afternoon, it had dropped to 8.72 feet.
"Bigger rivers have more of a delay, so they can take a day or two or three to come up," DaSilva said. "Smaller rivers come up then go right back down pretty quickly."
According to the Associated Press more than 100,000 homes and businesses across four states remained without power on Saturday.
After first arriving in Florida as a hurricane, the storm spent the better part of a week unleashing tornadoes and flooding, damaging homes and taking lives as it moved up the East Coast.
Though the skies cleared, a flood warning remained in effect until Saturday night in a small part of northern New York where up to 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain fell. The National Weather Service said water there was receding slowly, and many roads remained flooded.
Even in drier areas, more than 48,000 homes and businesses in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont still had no electricity as of Sunday afternoon, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us. Some 31,000 outages were in hard-hit Ohio, where Debby-related storms including tornadoes blew through the northeastern part of the state on Wednesday.
Debby's last day and night over the U.S. inundated parts of New York, Pennsylvania and New England with rain and flash flooding on Friday, prompting evacuations and rescues.
Officials in Tioga County in north-central Pennsylvania said Sunday morning that 10 teams of emergency service volunteers would be out surveying residents about damage as responders kept up the search for a person missing since the flooding.
"Please be kind to them, because these are volunteers ... they work here in the 911 center, they're fire, police, they're EMS, these folks are dedicating their Sunday to help you out," said County Commissioner Marc Rice.
The weather service confirmed that an EF-1 tornado touched down in Pennsylvania's capital city early Friday. Forecasters said the tornado, with peak winds estimated at 105 mph (169 kph), touched down just after 4:30 a.m. in Harrisburg and traveled north for almost 3 ½ miles (5.6 kilometers), blowing off a set of overhead doors at a warehouse and causing roof damage to a church and roof and structural damage to several homes, as well as uprooting dozens of trees.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.