There's a good chance you could be reading this on your cellphone in a darkened home or office.
Heavy rain and winds left thousands of customers without electricty across a broad swath of Pennsylvania on Thursday, with more intense weather set to come, including on Halloween.
The National Weather Service's (NWS) Binghamton, N.Y. office has issued a wind advisory for all of Northeast Pennsylvania from 11 a.m. Friday until 5 a.m. Saturday. Wind advisories also have been issued by NWS' State College, Philadelphia/Mount Holly and Pittsburgh offices, effectively covering much of the state.
PPL Electric Utilities' online outage map on Thursday afternoon showed weather-related issues across its service area, which covers a large chunk of Northeast and Central Pennsylvania. Utilities covering neighboring areas, including FirstEnergy and UGI, also were reporting outages.
What to expect
Here is what to expect, according to NWS:
- Light winds tonight will shift westerly and increase Friday morning behind a departing low pressure center.
- West-northwest winds of 15-25 mph, with gusts of 40-50 mph are expected Friday afternoon, evening and into the Friday night.
- Gusty winds will blow around unsecured objects.
- Tree limbs or weak trees could be blown down.
- Scattered power outages could occur.
