The strong weather system that moved through the area overnight produced heavy winds, toppling trees and power lines in many neighborhoods. As of 9 a.m. Friday morning one neighborhood without power was centered along Silver Creek and Polk Valley roads in Lower Saucon Township. PPL said approximately 270 customers within the shaded area were without power as of that time. The company provided an estimated repair time of 11 p.m. Friday on its outage center map.
Thousands of residents in southern Lehigh, southern Northampton and upper Bucks counties were without power Friday morning, after a powerful storm system producing wind gusts of 55 mph or greater, toppling trees and utility poles throughout the area.
The National Weather Service said a wind gust of 56 mph was recorded at Philadelphia International Airport at 6:05 a.m., and a wind advisory for 20 to 30 mph winds with gusts up to 55 mph remained in effect for all of southeastern Pennsylvania until 10 a.m.
As of 9 a.m., PPL was reporting large clusters of power outages in its service areas across the Lehigh Valley and the greater Philadelphia area, with an estimated repair time of 11 p.m. Friday for most of the outages.
Among those appearing on the map at that time were:
- 1,174 customers without power in parts of South Bethlehem, including parts of Lehigh University. The area without power extended along both sides of Hayes Street from near Morton Street to Mountain Drive North and across to the other side of South Mountain.
- 270 customers without power in Lower Saucon Township in an area that included Polk Valley Road, Silver Creek Road and parts of Reservoir and Lower Saucon roads. The Saucon Valley School District campus is located within that outage zone.
- 455 customers without power in Springfield Township, Bucks County, in a rural area that extended roughly southeast from the village of Springtown along Rt. 412 to near Stony Garden Road.
- 477 customers without power in Haycock Township, Bucks County, along Stony Garden Road, Saw Mill Road, Old Bethlehem Road, Winding Road and various roads in between.
- 604 customers without power in parts of Upper Saucon Township, in an area extending north from just north of Mill Road into Lower Saucon Township Salisbury Township and West Bethlehem. Homes and businesses along parts of Liberty Road, Blue Church Road, Lanark Road, Camp Meeting Road, Oakhurst Drive, Stonesthrow Road, Black River Road, Seidersville Road and Broadway were within that area.
Numerous smaller clusters of outages were also listed on the map, which highlights outage areas containing 50 or more customers in shaded zones of red, orange and green.
Downed trees were also keeping local police departments busy, as they had to temporarily close roads in some cases due to wires brought down by the brush.
Lower Saucon Township Police closed part of Rt. 378 after trees and wires fell on the road overnight, and although it had reopened by 9 a.m., other roads–including Sherry Hill Road and Drifting Drive in the township–remained closed due to the same issue.
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With the passage of the storm system, temperatures dropped precipitously, from the lower 60s at around 5 a.m. to the upper 30s by 9 a.m. According to forecasters, temperatures were expected to continue falling throughout the day and will remain near normal over the weekend, with highs in the upper 30s and lows in the teens to lower 20s.
To view the PPL Outage Center map, click here. To report a power outage to PPL, click here. To report trees down on a roadway in Northampton County, call the county’s non-emergency dispatch center at 610-759-2200 or your local police or fire department.
To sign up for emergency alerts from Lower Saucon Township Police via Nixle, click here.