High winds are leading to power outages across the Lehigh Valley on Friday.
At the peak of the outages around 12:50 p.m., PPL was reporting 1,362 outages in Lehigh County. The bulk of the outages — more than 700 — were in Salisbury Township, according to the utility’s outage map. The utility reported around 500 outages in Northampton County, mostly in Lower Saucon Township.
The number of outages PPL was reporting in the two counties dropped to around 1,400 around 2:30 p.m. By 6:30 p.m., total outages were less than 1,000.
Met-Ed reported a small number of outages, around 65, mostly in the Easton area.
Winds of 20 to 30 mph, with gusts up to 50 mph, were expected to continue through late Friday night, according to the National Weather Service. The region remains under a wind advisory through midnight.
In its advisory, the weather service warned that the winds would likely lead to downed tree limbs and power lines, resulting in some outages.
Downed trees, tree limbs and wires were reported across the Lehigh Valley. Around 2:30 p.m., Lower Saucon Township police reported that Springtown Hill Road was closed in the area of Orchard Road due to a tree and wires down.
The high winds will continue throughout the evening as trick-or-treat gets under way in most of the region.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
