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 One of the hardest hit spots was the Syracuse-area community of
Smithfield, New York, where four of the deaths were reported and at
least four homes destroyed on Tuesday, Madison County Undersheriff
John Ball said in a statement.
In Maryland, one boy was killed and eight others, aged 15 and under,
were injured when they tried to shelter from tree branches and other
debris being whipped around by the wind.
The storms uprooted trees and tore down power lines across several
counties in central New York, as the extreme weather raged from the
Ohio Valley and parts of New England through the mid-Atlantic
region, police and weather officials said.
Roughly 174,000 people were without power in the Philadelphia
region, Pennsylvania utility PECO spokeswoman Jackie Thompson said.
 CNN reported nearly 500,000 homes and businesses without power on
Tuesday, mostly in Pennsylvania and New York state.
Mark Pellerito, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service
office in Binghamton, New York, told Reuters the storms in and
around Madison County "exhibited a lot of rotation", and tornado
warnings were issued during the evening.
Four people were killed from three collapsed homes and two other
homes were destroyed in Madison County, the National Weather Service
office in Binghamton said. The storms had dissipated by Wednesday
morning, it said.
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Pellerito said ground teams would have to examine the area on
Wednesday to determine conclusively whether property damage was
caused by high winds or twisters.
The severe weather had started on Tuesday afternoon in northeastern
Ohio, where relatively weak twisters were reported before the storms
spread eastward along a cold front and gathered strength, he said.
(Additional reporting by Eric M. Johnson from Seattle; Writing by
Steve Gorman; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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