Pittsburgh Weather: Severe Storms Rip Through Area, Causing Massive Power Outages
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Nearly 55,000 homes in the area are without power after storms moved through the region on Thursday.
Duquesne Lights says there are about 35,000 customers without power in the area. Duquesne Light also said there are phone and web issues impacting customers' ability to report outages.
"Because of these challenges, the full extent of storm damage and the number of impacted customers are not yet known," Duquesne Light said in a statement. The company added that "full restoration may not be complete until Saturday afternoon."
Penn Power says more than 17,000 customers in the area are without power. Much of the region was under a severe thunderstorm warning at some point Thursday, but all warnings and watches have expired.
A viewer sent in a photo of a tree that fell onto a home in Butler County. Storms also brought down trees, poles and wires in other parts of the Pittsburgh area.
Power crews are now out trying to repair utility poles and downed wires to restore power, including in Carnegie, which was hit hard by power outages. There is no power at the GetGo, while the BP gas station is one of the only spots in Carnegie with power.
"It was really black coming from this direction. And I happened to look up and observe the clouds and I saw a rotation above my head," said Heather Nevills from Carnegie.
Nevills, who happens to be a meteorologist, described more of what she saw during the storms.
"I saw a bunch of stuff starting to fly towards me so I ran to the house because it was hard to see with all the debris flying in the air," said Nevills.
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Hurricane Laura has since weakened to a tropical storm, but there's still life-threatening flooding and damaging winds spreading inland over western and center Louisiana. Unsurvivable storm surge still continues to rise along the coast.
Here in western Pennsylvania, we could see around an inch of rainfall from Laura, which would be a low-pressure system late Friday into Saturday.
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