U.S. swelters under deadly heat wave ("NO SHIT")

Jessica Blue stood barefoot in the fountain at Manhattan's Washington Square Park, her clothes and hat getting drenched with cool water as the temperature neared 100 degrees.

"I was out shopping, but I couldn't take it any more," the 54-year-old said Tuesday. "Better cold water than sweat. I'm sick of sweating."

Relief from the heat wave was in sight for Blue and others in the Northeast as a cold front was expected to lower temperatures to the mid-80s on Wednesday.

The first signs of cooler weather arrived with a bang starting Tuesday afternoon, when heavy thunderstorms swept across parts of the region, knocking out power to tens of thousands of utility customers from New Jersey to Vermont.

The storms, coupled with the hot weather, were the likely causes of an outage that left about 9,900 Consolidated Edison customers without power in and around New York City, spokeswoman D. Joy Faber said Wednesday. (Watch what relief and threats may come from the West --2:57)

Almost 26,000 customers of New York's Long Island Power Authority were still without power early Wednesday, according to the utility's Web site.

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