PLAINS, LUZERNE CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Strong thunderstorms swept across Northeastern Pennsylvania Friday night, leaving tens of thousands of customers without electricity and bringing reports of downed trees, damaged power lines and blocked roadways across the region.<\/p>\n
As of early Saturday morning, PPL Electric Utilities reported more than 33,000 customers without power across its service territory, including widespread outages in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The hardest-hit counties in the region included Monroe County (6,261 outages), Luzerne County (5,054), Wayne County (4,061), Lackawanna County (2,569), Carbon County (2,465), Northumberland County (1,947), Montour County (1,143), Schuylkill County (922) and Pike County (417).<\/p>\n
Some of the largest concentrations of outages were reported in:<\/p>\n
Wilkes-Barre: nearly 3,900 customersFairview Township (Luzerne County): more than 860Stroud Township (Monroe County): more than 2,000Pocono Township (Monroe County): more than 2,300Lehigh Township (Wayne County): more than 2,100Kidder Township (Carbon County): more than 1,600<\/p>\n
Residents across social media shared photos and videos of trees snapped by strong winds, large limbs blocking neighborhood streets, utility wires brought down by falling trees and scattered property damage. Numerous posts described lengthy power outages that began as the storms moved through Friday evening. Those reports are consistent with widespread outages reported by utilities and local media, though individual damage reports have not yet been independently confirmed.<\/p>\n
PPL crews worked overnight to restore service and urged customers to stay away from any downed power lines, assuming they are energized, and to report hazards immediately.<\/p>\n
Additional rounds of showers and isolated thunderstorms remain possible through the holiday weekend, which could slow restoration efforts in some areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PLAINS, LUZERNE CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Strong thunderstorms swept across Northeastern Pennsylvania Friday night, leaving tens of thousands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-235372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}