A fast-moving thunderstorm barreled through Carbon County and neighboring parts of the Lehigh Valley shortly before 7 p.m. Friday, snapping large branches and dropping trees across roads and power lines. Fire and police crews spent the evening shutting down affected streets and clearing debris while utility workers fanned out to survey the damage. Thousands of residents were left in the dark into the night as power restoration slowly got underway.
PPL reported roughly 43,000 customers without electricity after the storm, including about 3,400 outages in Carbon County, 8,500 in Monroe County, 4,400 in Lehigh County and more than 3,000 outages each in Northampton and Schuylkill counties, according to Times News. Officials noted that those figures were an early snapshot while crews were still scrambling across multiple service areas…