LUZERNE COUNTY, Pa. — It was a day of cleanup following a night of strong storms that turned out the lights on thousands of UGI customers in Luzerne County.
More than 2,600 homes and businesses were still without power Friday morning.
Crews repaired downed power lines on Meeker Road in Lehman Township. The road was closed as linemen worked to restore service.
Route 29 near Pavlick Road in Jackson Township was down to one lane while workers cleared debris and reconnected lines taken out during the storms.
On Chase Road in Jackson Township, a tree twisted and fell across the roadway Thursday afternoon, knocking down lines and knocking out power for neighbors.
Crews cleared the tree from the roadway, and UGI was trying to restore power Friday. Several homes along Chase Road were still without electricity early Friday afternoon.
Jaffrey Katra lives a few miles down the road in Hunlock Township. He watched the storms blow in.
"It started off with wind, and it turned into the clouds turning completely black in the sky, and I thought, oh boy, this looks like a possible tornado or something with a lot of wind gusts," he said.
The wind knocked over the chairs on his front lawn. Then came the lightning.
"The whole sky was lit up with electricity going from place to place," Katra said. "Some of it came pretty close to the ground."
Katra said he lost power around 8 p.m. Thursday.
"Boy, oh boy, here we go again," he thought. "We get these lightning surges, electricity off maybe every year and a half to two years."
Katra and his wife were without power for more than six hours. He said if there's one positive from the storms, it's that the rains are just what his flowers need.
"It was good that we got a nice torrential rain too," Katra said. 'That's why you can see all the plants are doing very well because we've had over the last two weeks a lot of rain here and there."
Several hundred customers were still without power in Luzerne County late Friday afternoon.