The steaminess of a summer day exploded into storminess Tuesday evening, offering the spectacle of thunder, lightning and wind-whipped rain, along with the discomforts of power outages at tens of thousands of homes and businesses.

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       By far the largest number of people losing power were in Fairfax County, many in the areas of McLean, Tysons and West Falls Church. Dominion Energy reported about 58,000 of its customers lacked electricity at one point in the evening.

       Montgomery County was not spared: On Millhaven Place in the Germantown area, a lightning strike touched off a fire in the roof and attic area of a three-story condominium apartment house, the fire department said.

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       A dozen units suffered significant damage, said Pete Piringer, a spokesman for the fire department. No serious injuries were reported.

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       In the District, lightning apparently ignited a house fire in the 4400 block of Douglas Street NE, and trees fell on houses in the 900 block of Burns Street NE, according to the D.C. fire department. In Southeast Washington, a tree toppled onto a house in the 1100 block of Chaplin Street.

       A large chunk of turf was torn out of the ground as it fell over.

       No injuries were reported in those or other storm-related incidents in the city.

       In Northern Virginia, officials reported more than a dozen trees down in the city of Falls Church alone.

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       As the trees topple, overhead electric wires are torn down, sometimes plunging neighborhoods into hours of darkness.

       Power was cut off to the West Falls Church Metrorail station. The loss of electricity came in the area where the storms struck, but a Metro spokeswoman could not give a cause for the outage.

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       In one stormy hour, more than three-fifths of an inch of rain poured down at Washington’s official measuring site at Reagan National Airport. A wind gust was clocked at 41 mph.

       Summer thunderstorms in the Washington area are generally transient events, sweeping across city and suburb from the north or west, following an advance guard of darkening skies. After a fierce couple of hours, they generally depart for points east. Some parts of the area seem to be skipped entirely, leaving their residents to wonder what the stir was all about.

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       In many ways, Tuesday evening followed such a scenario. Around 8 p.m., the orange rays of the setting sun spread over the area as a kind of sign that peace was being restored after a time of turbulence.

       The turbulence stems at least in part from the energies stored in the atmosphere on a sultry summer afternoon. Before the storm, the official temperature in Washington had climbed to a sweltering 94 degrees.

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       At two consecutive hours during the steamy afternoon, at 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., the heat index in Washington touched 103 degrees. Those figures suggested an afternoon that was about as hot and humid as the region has seen all summer.

       The 94-degree reading made Tuesday the warmest day thus far in August. It also was the third consecutive day in the 90s, permitting us to say that once again a heat wave was being imposed on Washington.