AROUND 10,000 homes are still without power after violent lightning storms swept across the region this morning.

  • If you have pictures of the storms, email newsdesk@nne.co.uk

Engineers have been battling to restore electricity to 38,000 homes which suffered power cuts across County Durham, Teesside, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear in the early hours.

Northern Powergrid says it has managed to restore power to 28,000 homes but is still working to reconnect another 10,000.

Around 3,600 homes in the Gateshead area were affected, while in County Durham the Stanley area was among the hardest hit.

Rod Gardner, Northern Powergrid’s head of network operations, said: “We have invested in maintaining and upgrading our network but weather like the intense, sporadic lightning storms we saw this morning across parts of our region can cause damage to our power network.

“We’d like to reassure our customers that our engineers will continue to work throughout the day, diverting electricity through alternative routes on our network and coordinating repairs so we can restore power for customers who are still affected and we thank them for their patience.”

Damage to overhead power lines caused disruption to train services, with delays on Northern Rail services expected to continue until around 2pm today.

The Met Office has issued a yellow weather warning for rain - with a risk of flooding, which is expected to remain in place until 6pm.

A spokesman said: "Heavy showers and thunderstorms are expected to develop more widely across central, southern and eastern parts of England during Thursday night and Friday morning, whilst rain spreading from the west may also turn locally heavy and thundery.

"This all moving eastwards during the course of the day, but not clearing East Anglia until evening. Please be aware of the risk of disruption due to localised flooding and also from lightning strikes.