UPDATE — Monday morning, July 6: 

JCP&L still had roughly 44,000 customers without power statewide on Monday morning, a count that had dropped from more than 87,000 on Sunday. Sussex County held 6,400 of those outages. The utility estimated that most remaining outages should clear by Wednesday. Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative had driven its outage count down to 520 members, a sharp drop from the 8,000 who lost power Friday night. NJ Transit kept the Morris & Essex Line and the Gladstone Branch shut down on Monday. Crews were still clearing more than 50 trees from the Morris & Essex right-of-way. Service resumed Sunday on the Montclair-Boonton and North Jersey Coast lines. The Northeast Corridor was running on time.

Back-to-back storms tore through northern and central New Jersey over Friday and Saturday nights, knocking out power for roughly 249,000 customers statewide. Sussex County took some of the worst damage. JCP&L warned Sunday that restoration there would stretch across multiple days as a flash flood watch warned of more thunderstorms and flooding.

By Sunday evening, JCP&L reported more than 54,000 customers without power, including 19,000 in Morris County and 6,000 in Sussex County. PSE&G listed more than 28,000 and was reassessing its restoration timeline.

The same storm front knocked out power for homes across the Northeast and Midwest. KFI AM 640, citing PowerOutage.us, reported more than 842,000 without electricity on July 4. ABC News put the regional total near 779,000. Connecticut utilities listed roughly 50,000 out by Saturday evening, climbing toward 100,000 overnight. Pennsylvania and New York each saw outages in the five figures.

PJM, the regional grid operator for 13 states and D.C., had warned that demand might break a record set in 2006. Federal emergency orders ran through July 3.

Temperatures climbed to the mid-90s and upper 90s in Sussex County on July 4, with the heat index forecast to reach 110 degrees, the New Jersey Herald reports. The day before, actual readings hit 99 degrees in Vernon and Sussex and 98 at High Point, NorthJersey.com records show. The National Weather Service had forecast the heat index could exceed 115 degrees across North Jersey.

Nineteen people had died of suspected heat-related causes statewide, the New Jersey Herald reports.

Cooling stations opened across Sussex County as temperatures climbed, TAPinto Sparta reports.

Friday night's storm had hit hard. Roughly 150,000 JCP&L customers were without power as of Saturday morning. By 6 p.m., the number had dropped to 110,668. PSE&G reported 24,326 out at the same time.

WRNJ Radio counted more than 9,500 outages in Hunterdon County and more than 4,500 in Warren County.

More storms hit Saturday night, pushing the outage count above 200,000. Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative reported 8,000 members lost power at the peak — more than 60% of its membership.

The cooperative posted on Twitter that crews had restored more than 5,000 members by morning.

Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative had restored power to more than half its affected members by Saturday morning. The utility's morning update put the remaining outages at 2,700, clustered heavily in Wantage where a pole had snapped near Lake Neepaulin. An earlier post had come from Frankford, where the author was also experiencing the outage firsthand. Crews from Butler, Pennsylvania, arrived to reinforce the local effort.

Sunday's 10 a.m. report showed the outage count had fallen to 1,000 homes. "They have been out there for three days on a holiday weekend, in heavy clothing, working 16-hour shifts in extremely hot weather," the cooperative wrote. "It has been a challenge, but those of you who know our crews or have seen those crews work know that they will move heaven and earth to get your power on as soon as safety permits."

Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative is New Jersey's only electric cooperative — a not-for-profit utility owned by the customers it serves. Founded in 1937, it maintains more than 700 miles of lines across its hilly northwestern Sussex County service territory.

Wind gusts reached 71 mph at Newark Airport and 70 mph in Perth Amboy, according to the National Weather Service. JCP&L recorded gusts as high as 67 mph in its service area. In Sussex County, trees and wires came down in Sandyston, Frankford and Wantage townships starting at 7:09 p.m.

The restoration workforce grew to more than 4,000 over the weekend. The initial deployment included 500 tree crews and 800-plus line workers. Reinforcements came from other FirstEnergy utilities and outside contractors. The company said it was working alongside municipal officials, emergency responders and local leaders.

JCP&L spokesman Chris Hoenig told NJ 101.5 that crews were working from largest outages to smallest and that every customer should have power back by Thursday night.

Governor Mikie Sherrill addressed the crisis on Twitter at 9:40 a.m. on July 4, warning that NJ Transit had suspended the Morris and Essex, Gladstone Branch, Montclair-Boonton and North Jersey Coast lines due to damage from the storm. She directed residents to call 211 for cooling centers and noted that the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities was working with power companies "to help restore power as quickly and safely as possible."

The Sussex County Sheriff's Office opened county libraries and designated Sparta Township Police Department as a round-the-clock cooling center. Municipal buildings in Wantage, Montague, Stillwater and Green townships also opened to residents. JCP&L announced seven locations in Sussex County for free water and ice. At 4 p.m. on July 4, JCP&L still had 9,026 customers out in the county — about 15% of the county, TAPinto Sparta reports.

Little relief came from the temperatures. Sunday highs would reach only the mid-80s, and Monday would bring lower 70s, NorthJersey.com reports. A flash flood watch ran from Sunday afternoon through Monday night, according to the National Weather Service.

Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia (R, 24th District) used Twitter to tie the outages to the state's electrification push, posting: "We just got ROCKED by massive storms up here on top of sweltering heat." She posted a JCP&L outage map screenshot alongside Sherrill's call for the Board of Public Utilities to "strongly consider" freezing electric rates.

Sources

• National Weather Service, Mount Holly Office, Local Storm Report LSRPHI, July 4, 2026, 11:50 p.m.

• National Weather Service, Upton Office, Flash Flood Watch Briefing, July 5, 2026

• ABC News, "Severe storms roll through parts of US as heat wave continues," July 5, 2026

• Central Jersey, "Storms Slam New Jersey on July 4th Weekend, Cutting Power to Thousands," July 4, 2026

• CT Insider, "Fourth of July storms cause over 50000 Connecticut power outages," July 4, 2026

• Daily Record, "How hot could it get in NJ today as extreme heat wave continues," July 3, 2026, updated 2:35 p.m.

• ElectricChoice.com, "PJM Emergency Orders: Heat Wave Threatens Record Electricity Demand," July 2, 2026

• FindEnergy.com, "Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative Provider Page," accessed July 2026

• FirstEnergy Corp., "JCP&L Power Restoration Update," July 5, 2026, 1:59 a.m.

• Greenwich Time, "Fourth of July storms cause over 50000 Connecticut power outages," July 4, 2026

• KFI AM 640, "Power Outages Hit Over 842,000 Homes As Heatwave Disrupts July 4 Events," July 4, 2026

• New Jersey Herald, "Weather mars July 4 in North Jersey and cancels events," July 4, 2026, 2:40 p.m.

• NJ 101.5, "NJ Storm Power Outage Updates," July 5, 2026

• NJ.com, "NJ Transit Morris and Essex Line, Gladstone Branch remain suspended Monday," July 6, 2026

• NorthJersey.com, "Heat wave in NJ sees towns set temperature records," July 2, 2026, updated 9:11 p.m.

• NorthJersey.com, "NJ power outages hit over 175K people on Fourth of July," July 4, 2026, updated 6:54 p.m.

• NorthJersey.com, "NJ power outages: Over 100K lack power and North Jersey could see flash floods Sunday," July 5, 2026, updated 9:25 p.m.

• PowerOutage.us, real-time outage tracker data, accessed July 6, 2026, 7:30 a.m.

• TAPinto Sparta, "July 4 Power Outages Impact Sparta Township, Sussex County Residents," July 4, 2026

• WRNJ Radio, "Thousands of JCP&L customers remain without power after severe storms," July 4, 2026 (updated July 6, 2026)

• Dawn Fantasia, Assemblywoman (R, 24th District), "We just got ROCKED by massive storms up here on top of sweltering heat," July 4, 2026 — Twitter/X post.

• Mikie Sherrill, Governor of New Jersey, "Severe storms caused damage across northern and central NJ last night," July 4, 2026, 9:40 a.m. — Twitter/X post.

• Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative, "At the peak of the storm, we had 8,000 members out of power," July 4–5, 2026 — Twitter/X post.

• Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative, Outage Update #5, July 5, 2026, 10:00 a.m.

• Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative, "About SREC," sussexrec.com, accessed July 2026