A day after severe thunderstorms swept through Monmouth County, many residents were stuck without air conditioning or even fans as temperatures climbed dangerously high Sunday afternoon.
The Highlands, Atlantic Highlands and Middletown were the hardest hit and sustained the most damage with trees falling on power lines, according to JCP&L.
JCP&L shared on its official X account Sunday morning that after working all night, crews “are working throughout the continued hot and humid conditions today to restore power to customers affected by last night’s severe storms that affected various portions of northern Monmouth, as well as Hunterdon and Warren counties.”
As of 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, more than 1,000 customers in Highlands, Atlantic Highlands and Middletown still had no power.
“It started out this morning at about 2,400 customers,” Chris Hoenig, a spokesperson for JCP&L, told NJ Advance Media on Sunday. “Now we’ve restored more than half of it.”
He said JCP&L is hoping to restore power to residents in those affected areas by or before 9 p.m. Sunday.
As of 2:45 p.m., the outage map showed that more than 4,000 residents were without power in Monmouth Country when a circuit breaker trip triggered an outage in parts of Howell and Freehold.
Hoenig said JCP&L is working to restore the power as soon as possible and numbers are expected to fluctuate throughout the day though customers can check the My Town outage map for updates.
There is a risk of severe thunderstorms across New Jersey Sunday, mainly between 2 p.m. and 11 p.m., while temperatures remain in the mid-90s, according to the National Weather Service.
Meteorologists said damaging winds accompanying the storms could cause tree damage and downed power lines.
Saleah Blancaflor may be reached at sblancaflor@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @saleyley and Instagram.
