Severe thunderstorm outbreak with hurricane-force wind gusts underway in Eastern US

A severe weather outbreak is underway on Monday as thunderstorms unleashed damaging wind gusts, hail, drenching rainfall and even a few tornadoes.

Live updates: Damaging storms racing across Eastern US

Accounting for every level of severe storm risk, around 120 million people in the Eastern US could be impacted by damaging weather Monday and Monday night as a potent storm system, especially for August, crosses the region.

Wind gusts in the strongest storms could reach speeds of 60 to 80 mph. The upper end of this range is equivalent to hurricane-force wind gusts and can cause significant damage.

Power outages and flight cancellations mounted as storms slammed several states with strong winds.

More than 170,000 customers were without power on Monday afternoon across the East, with the majority of outages in Tennessee, Georgia and West Virginia, according to PowerOutage.us.

Over 1,000 flights were canceled Monday with 4,500 additional delays as storms disrupted flight paths to major hubs like Atlanta, according to data from FlightAware.