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Severe storms and high winds knocked out power for tens of thousands of residents across Berks, Lancaster, Lehigh, Northampton, Chester, and Montgomery counties Monday night, and utility crews worked through the night and into Tuesday morning to restore service.
PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide, showed more than 16,000 customers without power in Berks County and over 12,000 in Lancaster County. Neighboring counties were hit hard as well. According to WFMZ-TV, PPL Electric Utilities reported more than 7,000 outages in Lehigh County and nearly 3,000 in Northampton County. PECO reported more than 13,800 customers without power in Chester County and more than 7,000 in Montgomery County.
The widespread outages were triggered by a potent squall line that pushed ahead of a strong cold front Monday night. No injuries have been reported locally in connection with the storms.
Utility workers stayed on the job through the night as temperatures fell. Jonah Howe, regional affairs director for PPL Electric, said crews were prepared for the challenge.
"We'll have crews continuing to monitor conditions throughout the night," Howe said. "We do have additional crews in the area and will be monitoring and restoring power as quickly as possible."
Howe urged residents to stay safe and stay away from downed wires. "Assume they're energized, report downed wires to PPL Electric or local emergency responders, just stay safe through the storm and report outages," he said.
PPL noted that the company invests year-round in what it calls storm hardening — upgrades like heavier conductors and grid modernization — to keep the system as resilient as possible heading into severe weather events.
The local storms are part of a much broader pattern of extreme weather gripping the country. Hundreds of thousands of customers lost power across Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan after high winds raked eastward from the Great Lakes region on Saturday (March 14). A gust of 66 mph at Pittsburgh International Airport was recorded as the fourth-strongest non-thunderstorm wind on record there, according to the National Weather Service.
AccuWeather senior meteorologist John Feerick described the situation as a "potent triple-threat March megastorm" sweeping across the country from Sunday into Monday. "It's definitely a very active weather weekend, that's for sure," Feerick said. "It's a highly amplified pattern, which means you get a lot of extremes."
Customers who need to report an outage can contact their utility provider directly. FirstEnergy, PECO, and PPL Electric all maintain online outage reporting tools. Residents are reminded to treat all downed wires as live and to contact their utility company or local emergency responders immediately if they spot one.
Restoration work is ongoing, and outage numbers are expected to continue declining as crews make their way through affected neighborhoods.