Jun 15, 2015 2 min read

Severe storms rolled through Washington County late Sunday and early Monday, leaving thousands without power.

The storm dumped an average of 2.1 inches of rain on the county. An additional 2 to 3 inches is expected to fall through Saturday morning, according to Lee Hendricks, a meteorologist with National Weather Service.

Hendricks said this number is the average across the county, so some areas may get hit harder than others.

Todd Meyers, spokesman for West Penn Power, said Monday 18,187 customers were affected by storm-related outages, and as of midday, they restored power to 15,247 of them.

In Washington County, 5,100 customers were affected, and 4,750 of them had power restored.

Thanks to an earlier storm dropping the temperature by eight degrees, major damage was avoided, because that prevented later storms from packing major wind speeds, Meyers said.

The majority of storm-related damages came solely from rain and lightning.

The rain was considerably lighter in Greene County, which had no reported outages.

Meyers said West Penn called in workers from Mon Power to help its own crews restore power to those who lost it.

West Penn prepares for storms and is ready for the worst, Meyers said.

He added storms in the past week were, typically, worse than originally forecast.

“We’re staffed up for more severe weather,” Meyers said, calling it a “dynamic situation.”