Strong winds that have persisted through the early part of Friday in Schuylkill County have compounded power outage issues here this week.
Thousands of homes and businesses spent much of this week in the dark and cold following a heavy snowstorm on Tuesday morning.
Now, strong winds – with gusts near 50 mph at times – are knocking out electric service to hundreds in Schuylkill County.
As of noon Friday, more than 1,100 homes and businesses served by PPL Electric are without power. Some of those outages can still be contributed to the outages earlier this week.
However, wind is knocking out the power once again here in Schuylkill County.
More than half of the outages currently being reported are in Pine Grove Township. Washington and Wayne townships are also experiencing power disruptions at this time.
Based on our tracking of the power outages, some of these can be blamed on the snowstorm and others are because of the wind.
Tracie Witter at PPL Electric tells The Canary that outages were down to 545 in Schuylkill County at 4 a.m. Friday. Then it was 875 customers without power by 6 a.m.
At a little after 11 a.m., 496 homes and businesses here were without power. So that shows how much the wind is having an impact on power outages today.
“We’re prepared for this weekend’s sporadic winds and light snow, and any additional resulting outages. monitoring the forecast and will be ready to respond as safely and quickly as possible to any outages that may occur,” Witter says in an email to The Canary.
Here’s a look at the current outages (as of 12:15 p.m. Friday):
| Municipality | Outages | Total PPL Customers |
|---|---|---|
| Branch Twp | 3 | 4,752 |
| Cressona Boro | 121 | 6,293 |
| Hubley Twp | 2 | 539 |
| Mcadoo Boro | 1 | 1,396 |
| North Union Twp | 1 | 1,481 |
| Norwegian Twp | 1 | 7,564 |
| Pine Grove Twp | 601 | 5,041 |
| Porter Twp | 19 | 1,279 |
| Pottsville | 1 | 9,160 |
| South Manheim Twp | 43 | 2,041 |
| Tremont Boro | 2 | 1,111 |
| Upper Mahantongo Twp | 2 | 297 |
| Washington Twp | 114 | 682 |
| Wayne Twp | 163 | 2,163 |
| West Brunswick Twp | 79 | 2,498 |
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