Tens of thousands were left without power throughout the region after severe storms slammed our area with powerful winds, hail and heavy rain Wednesday.
A First Alert was in effect for our region Wednesday due to scattered thunderstorms capable of producing damaging winds and hail.
The storms began moving in around 2 p.m. Areas in Montgomery County, including Flourtown, Norristown and East Norriton were hit especially hard as strong wind brought down powerlines and trees while large hailstones fell.
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"It was crazy. Insane," East Norriton resident Verne Vetrulli told NBC10. "It was the noise that was very scary. Nothing I had ever heard before."
The storms moved out of the region around 7 p.m., but not before causing widespread damage and power outages.
As of 10 p.m., more than 42,000 people were without power in Montgomery County and more than 12,000 in Philadelphia. The total number of PECO outages was down to around 14,000 as of 7 a.m. Thursday.
"It's absolutely unbelievable," Loretta Vagnoni, another East Norriton resident, told NBC10. "The hail was so hard I thought it was going to break the windows and then the big boom."
The wet weather followed another hazy, hot and humid day as smoke from western wildfires continued to impact air quality. The air had cleared by Thursday morning.
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