Power Outages Have Begun, More Likely Over The Weekend

When I started today's broadcast from the RWJBarnabas Health Seaside Park Boardwalk Studio I was really hoping to squeeze the whole shift in, until 8 tonight as usual.

But Mother Nature had a different plan, and when the rain started right around 5:30, I saw one flash of lightning and decided that it was time to bail.

And I'm glad I did.

While my promotions assistant Kory and I were rushing to button the building up, the power went out.

In the time it took us to get from Seaside Park back to the WOBM studio in Toms River, the lightning became more plentiful and the rain was briefly torrential.

By the time I got to downtown Toms River, I could already see that the power was out (thankfully, we have a generator here to keep the radio stations on the air).

Stopping by the Jersey Central Power & Light website, as of this writing, there are 20,000 without power in Ocean County, with most of those in Toms River and Berkeley Township.

With the rough weather expected to continue through Saturday thanks to the remnants of hurricane Laura bringing rain, wind, and some potentially severe thunderstorms to our area.

You can check out meteorologist Dan Zarrow's full forecast for Friday night and Saturday by clicking here.

You can stay up to date with JCP&L's outage map, and even see county by county and town by town, by clicking here.

And, if you lose power, give this life hack a try to keep an eye on the food in your freezer!