A strong line of thunderstorms–very unusual for February–moved across eastern Pennsylvania Wednesday night, plunging hundreds of homes in Hellertown and Lower Saucon Township into darkness.
High winds, heavy rain and unseasonably warm temperatures accompanied the line of storms, which brought down trees and power lines throughout the area.
Five utility poles were reportedly damaged along Durham Street between Lost River Caverns and Reservoir Road, along the east side of Hellertown borough near the township’s Wassergass section, where most of the outages seemed to be concentrated.
Many Saucon Source readers who live in the borough’s tree-filled Mountainview neighborhood reported that they were without electricity after the storms moved through.
According to the PPL Outage Center map, as of 11 p.m. Wednesday more than 600 Hellertown customers were without power as well as 41 in Lower Saucon Township.
Altogether more than 17,000 PPL customers were without power as of that hour.
Estimates for the restoration of power in Saucon Valley were not immediately available, although robo-calls about the outage were going out to utility customers.
Some minor flooding was also observed in typically flood-prone areas along the Saucon Creek, near the Heller-Wagner Grist Mill and the Meadows Road Bridge.
A screen shot of the PPL Outage Center map shows where the majority of the power outages in the Saucon Valley are concentrated: in Hellertown’s Mountainview section and east into Wassergass in Lower Saucon Township.
