Powerful thunderstorms swept across the central and northeastern regions of Pennsylvania on Thursday, strewing debris in their wake and leaving tens of thousands of people powerless, including several thousand in our region.
The Luzerne County Fair in Dallas closed early for the night “due to damage from the recent storm and a power outage,” a post on the fair’s Facebook page said. The fair is expected to reopen on Friday.
“We’re currently trying to restore power on the fairgrounds and we are actively cleaning up debris after today’s storm that significantly displaced many of our vendors,” the post said. “What a storm it was.”
The storms also caused darkness to descend on the area hours before sundown, with cars turning their headline on before 5 p.m. amid the downpours.
Fallen trees brought down powerlines in several areas, notably along Main Street in Nanticoke.
As of 5 p.m., PPL and UGI reported thousands of outages in NEPA and other parts of their coverage areas elsewhere in Pennsylvania. According to our newsgathering partners at WBRE/WYOU, more than 15,000 people were left without power statewide.