Roads were submerged with water and at one point, 17,000 were without power Wednesday night after heavy winds and rain pelted the area.

As of early this morning, 7,000 PPL customers were still without power throughout the state, according to a PPL service representative, who said power for most will likely be restored around noon Friday.Lehighton State Police said Route 248 was closed for over an hour Wednesday night, with no crashes there reported. This morning Route 895 in East Penn Township was closed because of flooding. Rock Street in Franklin Township and Gilberts Hill Road in Mahoning were closed because of trees on the road.There was plenty of rain to go around throughout the area, according to Valerie Meola, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.From 7 a.m. Wednesday through about the same time today, Meola said Carbon County received between 1.75 to 2.4 inches of rain; Monroe County between 1.5 to 2.5 inches; and Schuylkill County between 1-2 inches, with some of its areas receiving higher amounts.Local emergency management officials said that overall, the amount of storm damage was kept to a minimum.John M. Matz, Schuylkill County Emergency Management Agency coordinator, said the storm hit the county heavy before tapering off."It was here, it shook us up for a little while, and it was gone," Matz said. "At periods of time right when the severe line of thunderstorms passed over Schuylkill County, the rain was really intense, probably up to a couple of inches an hour over a short period of time."As a result, Matz said trees fell down, which in turn brought utility lines down. There was also roadway and basement flooding at areas where it has historically happened, and a fire department was called out to remove someone from a vehicle who was driving on a roadway, he said.According to an 8:30 p.m. report by the PPL Outage Center, 2,694 Carbon County customers were without power, along with 1,831 in Schuylkill County and 113 in Monroe.Two hours later, those numbers ballooned to 3,509 in Carbon, 1,910 in Schuylkill and 1,675 in Monroe.By 2 a.m. Thursday, PPL reported power still out to nearly 9,000 regional customers, including 1,423 in Carbon, 848 in Schuylkill and 1,101 in Monroe.Borough and township crews worked throughout the night to clear drainage areas of debris, and there were numerous reports of fallen trees and property damage.Matz said that as of about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, around 2,700 customers in the county were without power, though that number was down to about 700 as of this morning.The outages were spread across the county, with the highest area around the New Philadelphia area out toward Schuylkill Township, he said.Traffic control was requested early this morning along Route 61, where the right-hand lane was flooded, Matz said.In Rush Township, police and firefighters were dispatched to Route 309 just north of the Hometown Five Points intersection where highway flooding reduced traffic to a crawl and posed a danger to motorists.Responders set up safety flares in affected areas and reportedly summoned a pumper detail from nearby Tamaqua, while fire police and other volunteers directed traffic.In Tamaqua, the Little Schuylkill River rose several feet in a matter of a few hours. In west Tamaqua, the Wabash Creek came to within a few feet of the top of the tunnel by 9:30 p.m. as seen from the entrance arch at South Lehigh Street. At the east end of town, the Panther Creek also surged high.Bruce Henry, Monroe County Emergency Management director, said that while the storm was a mess, things were fairly manageable."A few trees down, couple thousand customers out, most of that was either restored last night or will be this morning," Henry said. "There were a couple of lightning strikes, minor fires were taken care of pretty quickly."Henry added, "It was a bad storm, but it was nothing real earth-shattering."Mark Nalesnik, Carbon County Emergency Management Agency coordinator, said he did not receive any calls about the storm."I wasn't notified of anything," Nalesnik said. "I expected to possibly get a call about flooding."However, Nalesnik said there was plenty of concern on the part of emergency management at the state, county and municipal levels."As far as I know, there were no major issues; we got through it relatively unaffected," he said. "If things did happen out there, I wasn't made aware of them."Showers were again expected today, but Meola said things should start to clear late, possibly with snow showers across the higher elevations, with highs in the 40s, before the temperature drops into the 20s tonight.Friday is expected to see sunshine, but will be much colder, with highs in the mid- to upper-20s, she said.