High winds knock out power throughout the region

First Energy said the largest cluster without power Wednesday night was near Belle Vernon.

More than 7,500 Westmoreland and Allegheny residents were without electric service as of 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to outage data from Duquesne Light and West Penn Power.

At the peak of the outages, there were more than 30,000 customers without power.

Duquesne Light blamed the outages on winds that reached 40 mph.

FirstEnergy spokesman Mike Grandillo said heavy winds forced trees and branches to knock down power lines. Crews will be working round the clock to restore power.

As of 8:30 p.m., Duquesne Light reported more than 5,600 outages in Allegheny County. More than 4,000 of the outages came from the Pittsburgh area, including about 2,100 in the Penn Hills and Churchill area and more than 1,000 in Coraopolis.

First Energy reported more than 1,000 outages in Westmoreland County at 8:30 p.m. and more than 900 in Allegheny County.

All of the outages remaining in Westmoreland County included fewer than 20 customers in any particular area except for one cluster near Belle Vernon that included about 200 customers. More than 600 of the affected customers in Allegheny County were in the South Park area.

That was down significantly from the 10,000 FirstEnergy customers that were without power in Southwestern Pennsylvania at 5:45 p.m. Areas hardest hit included Westmoreland (2,580), Allegheny (2,312), Armstrong (2,300) and Butler (463) counties.

Shortly before 5 p.m., Duquesne Light had reported about 19,500 customers out and just over 200 active incidents. ZIP codes with the highest numbers of customers out were Brentwood (15227), Penn Hills/Churchill (15235), Plum (15239), White Oak (15131) and Dormont (15216), with between about 4,800 and 1,300 customers out.

While there was no weather in the area Wednesday that the National Weather Service officially calls severe weather, wind gusts reached 30 to 40 mph, National Weather Service meteorologist Rich Redmond said.

“Today, we had the remnants of Hurricane Beryl move to our west, and strong winds associated with what used to be Hurricane Beryl moved over top of our area,” Redmond said.

Winds will begin to die down around midnight, Redmond said, coming in around 15 to 20 mph over night and into Thursday. Temperatures are forecast to fall between 75 and 80 Thursday with low humidity.

“The biggest thing we’ll have to deal with the next day or so are clouds,” he said.

High heat and humidity are forecast to resume next week, Redmond said, which may lead to storms.

“Any time you build up this kind of heat and humidity, you’re always going to have that risk of storms,” he said.