Damaging winds rip through Philly area; 130,000-plus lose power
Power lines, trees come down, lights go off, roads close, as March-like winds howls through region.
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March is due to arrive Friday. On Monday, it evidently became impatient.
A night-and-day-long siege of winds, gusting to near 60 mph, did a decent impersonation of a March nor’easter, knocking out power to more than 130,000 customers, taking down trees that collapsed onto wires and closed roads, and ripping part of the roof off a King of Prussia factory building.
The hardest-hit areas were the more tree-intensive sections of counties neighboring Philadelphia, said Peco spokesperson Thomas H. Brubaker. In all, Peco reported that 130,000 customers had lost power at some point, though all but 22,000 had it back by day’s end. South Jersey utilities reported 5,000 outages.
The Abington School District announced that outages forced it to close the senior and junior high schools early.
Road-closing reports were numerous. Downed trees blocked three lanes of I-476 near Villanova, the National Weather Service said, and northbound lanes of Route 130 in Delran and Willingboro, Burlington County.
The high winds arrived about 8 p.m. Sunday and continued through the day. A 54 mph gust was measured officially at Philadelphia International Airport, the highest wind since last March 2, according to National Weather Service data.
The winds were forecast to back off overnight, and Tuesday should be less punitive, but winds still could gust to 39 mph, the weather service said.
The winds came courtesy of two contrasting weather systems centered in different parts of the continent, said Jonathan O’Brien, a meteorologist. One was an unusually potent storm in eastern Canada, the other an area of pressure in the Northern Plains. Evidence of the pressure differences howled across Philadelphia.
The winds also were blamed for blowing down a wall of a commercial building at Fifth and Master Streets in Kensington and damaging the flat roof of an HVAC firm in King of Prussia.
Steve Olkowski told 6ABC and other TV stations that he heard branches hit the roof of his home in Upper Providence before a tree toppled and crashed into the bedroom about 2:45 a.m.
Olkowski said he and his wife were not harmed but had to crawl under the tree to get out of the room. They then carefully made their way outside because of downed wires, he said. The tree also took down the chimney.
The wind was blamed for some flight delays at Philadelphia International Airport. Also, more than 140 flights to or from the airport were canceled, but it was not clear how many, if any, were weather-related.
While the winds are forecast to back down, temperatures throughout the week are due to remain well below normal, with some precipitation possible on Friday, which happens to be March 1.
The in-like-a-lion, out-like-a-lamb folk wisdom likely is the product of underactive imaginations. But March winds are real. On average in Philadelphia it is the windiest month of the year, as spring begins its northward invasion and winter tries to hold its ground and air.
The government’s Climate Prediction Center’s 8- to 14-day outlook sees a likelihood of below-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation.
In the short term, with temperatures dipping into the 20s overnight and wind chills in the teens, Philadelphia and other local governments have declared code blue alerts, with the aim of getting homeless people off the streets and into shelters.