UPDATE: Soaking rain predicted with possible flooding

A soaking rain should hit the Richmond area late tonight or early tomorrow and end early tomorrow afternoon, forecasters say.

“It’ll be quite wet,“ said Brian Hurley, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

There could be isolated thunderstorms, but probably nothing major, Hurley said.

That’s because the current cool temperatures — in the mid-60s in early afternoon — supply less of the energy needed to create a big thunderstorm.

In the aftermath of the powerful storms that moved across the region last night, fewer than 300 Dominion Power customers remained without electricity this afternoon.

The storms doused the region, knocked down trees, cut power and brought dangerous lightning.

in Spotsylvania County, two children were struck by lightning, one fatally, when the storms rolled through the area. They were playing catch under the supervision of parents after a baseball game had been called off because of the weather.

Hanover authorities also received reports of two houses struck by lightning, one on Greenlake Circle and the other on Greenwood Road.

In Henrico, lightning was a possible culprit in a house fire on Idlebrook Drive near Deep Run Park and also in a shed fire on Turnbull Avenue near Patterson Avenue and North Parham Road.