The Lead Story

If you live in Monroe, the lead story will not come as a surprise as you too probably spent the last two days navigating around closed roads, downed trees, and power outages. Two rounds of severe thunderstorms tore through the region over the holiday weekend, and Monroe County was the hardest hit in Northeastern Pennsylvania both nights. Friday night's storms knocked out power to 6,261 Monroe County customers at the peak. Saturday night brought a second round that cut power to 5,728 more Monroe County customers, part of 16,717 outages across nine counties in the region, according to PPL Electric Utilities.

As of Sunday afternoon, the damage was still being counted. Live outage tracking showed 9,782 Monroe County customers without power, nearly 10% of all tracked customers in the county and the fourth-worst total of any county in the state. Crews from PPL and FirstEnergy have been working through the weekend to restore service, but if your lights are still out this morning, you are far from alone.

PPL says customers who lost power may be reimbursed for up to three bags of ice and three gallons of water per day during the outage by submitting receipts along with their account information to the company's Allentown claims office.