A strong storm moved through the Montgomery County area Monday evening with a powerful force as strong winds downed trees and power lines.
The area was under a tornado watch for part of Monday. Wind speeds picked up into the overnight hours, as around 1,600 PECO customers in Montgomery County were still without power as of Tuesday afternoon.
“It was definitely a very strong system overall,” said Ray Martin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Mount Holly, New Jersey office. He observed how “we really didn’t have any flooding impacts of significance. It was really a wind event.”
Reports from the National Weather Service’s Mount Holly, New Jersey office reported late Monday night wind speeds of 55 mph at Heritage Field in Pottstown, 50 mph in Fort Washington, 45 mph in Willow Grove, as well as 43 mph in New Hanover Township and King of Prussia.
“The combination of the warmth just ahead of it and the much colder air coming in behind it –the strong what we call dynamics aloft with the upper levels low and the troughs and the jet stream dynamics– definitely helped make this a very potent storm,” Martin said. “And as that strong cold front slammed into our warmer air, it certainly produced quite a bit of wind with that squall line overnight.
“Locally, as far as intensity, I mean, this is definitely on the higher end of severe weather events,” Martin said. “As far as widespread straight line wind damage, it’s certainly not the worst we’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely a bit on the early side for the season as far as you usually might see something like this closer to later spring or summer versus March.”
There were 350 calls for service into the Montgomery County Department of Public Safety’s Emergency Community Center from 8 a.m. Monday to 4 a.m. Tuesday, according to Todd Stieritz, the agency’s deputy director of public affairs, who recorded 10 a.m. to 12 a.m. as a “significantly busy period” with 184 calls. Of those, there were 180 road obstructions, 66 outdoor electrical fires, 46 vehicle crashes, and 20 disabled vehicles reported.
Stiertiz said he’s also heard “numerous instances” of downed trees and wires from the storm. Helen Reinbrecht, community relations coordinator for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s District 6, said “there were tree branches down,” with closures reported on back roads in Montgomery County; however, all were reopened as of late Tuesday morning.
Nearly 6,000 people were without power across the greater Philadelphia region as of early Tuesday afternoon, according to PECO’s outage map. As of 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, there were 153 outages, impacting 2,472 customers across Montgomery County. The utility company map indicated 260 outages in Lower Frederick Township, 231 outages in Upper Frederick Township, 226 outages in Limerick Township, 196 outages in Marlborough, 179 outages in Montgomery Township, and 165 outages in Lower Pottsgrove Township.
“The big thing was that [the storm] was early, and one thing of note was that we really didn’t see any lightning or thunder of significance,” Martin said. “A lot of places just went through without any lightning or thunder. So the wind just roared in.”
