Lehigh Valley escapes major widespread power outages

Power customers in other parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey remain without power.

Most Lehigh Valley residents have power this morning after severe thunderstorms brought high winds to the region Thursday night.

But tens of thousands of outages are reported across New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

First Energy Corp. reported about 70,000 customers without power on Friday morning, with the worst problems in Butler County, north of Pittsburgh, and Cambria County, east of the city. Thousands more outages were reported by PPL Utilities in central Pennsylvania

Utility crews are working to restore electricity to more than 3,900 homes and businesses this morning in New Jersey. Most of those are Jersey Central Power and Light customers in Monmouth and Ocean counties.

First Energy reports 714 customers in Northampton, Lehigh, Warren and Hunterdon counties still without power this morning. PPL reports 446 Northampton and Lehigh county residents are still without power.

Around 10 p.m. Thursday, PPL reported about 25,300 customers in its 29-county service area still had no electricity while power had been restored to more than 35,000 since this afternoon. PPL reported that the areas north of Interstate 80 were the hardest hit.