Hundreds of customers across the region remained in the dark Tuesday after heavy, wet snow weighed down on tree limbs and snapped power lines on Monday.
A spokesperson for PECO Energy, which has 1.6 million customers in the Philadelphia-area, says snapped power lines are the main cause of outages for their customers.
As of 3 a.m., PECO said about 1,600 customers remained without power in the five county area, down from 12,000 in Montgomery County alone at the height of the storm.
A transformer fire near the intersection of Penn Oak Road and Church Road in Springfield Township, Pa. helped knock out power for hundreds of customers in Montgomery County, emergency management officials told NBC10.
Dov and Aaron Wiener say they were without power in their home on Bryant Lane in Abington for five hours. As soon as the lights turned back on, a neighbor's tree crashed into their front yard, toppled onto their car and knocked out power to several families on the street.
"There was a major explosion," said Dov. "We knew something was bad."
"It was like a bomb went off," Aaron said. "You could hear a tree falling."
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The couple dealt with the cold by bundling up in their living room next to a gas-powered fireplace, their only source of heat.
"I'm trying to keep warm," Aaron said. "Keep the doors closed and everything buttoned up. Keep as much warmth as I can in the house."
PECO reported technical issues with its power outage hotline for most of the morning and early afternoon leaving some customers unable to report blackouts. Officials say they have since gotten the hotline back online and that customers can always report outages on their website.
PPL Power in the Lehigh Valley said several hundred customers in Berks, Lehigh and Northampton Counties lost power.
In New Jersey, PSE&G earlier reported about 3,000 of their 2.2 million customers were without power. As of early Tuesday however, only about a handful remained in the dark after crews worked throughout the night to restore service.
Delmarva Power, servicing customers in Delaware and Maryland, reported just a handful of outages, as well.
As power crews across the region work to restore service to customers, another storm that could cause even more power outages, continues to move towards the region.
