Thousands of customers were without power following Friday night’s storm, and Pepco officials estimated that full power restoration could take days.

Lightning, rain and winds gusting up to 60 mph struck Montgomery and Prince George's counties overnight Friday.

As of 8 a.m. Saturday, the county estimated 210,000 Pepco customers remained without power out of 305,000 in Montgomery County. Some 500 out of 800 traffic signals were without power across the county, according to the county information offices, while trees and debris littered streets across the area.

The company issued the following announcement on its website, as calls for customer assistance continued to pour in Saturday.

Due to the widespread damage and the large number of outages, the power restoration effort is expected to take several days. Critical customers who need electricity for life support equipment are advised to seek shelter where power is available. The weather forecast for the Washington area calls for more thunderstorms today, which could cause additional outages.

“As soon as the storm passed, we had crews starting to assess the damage,” said Thomas H. Graham, president, Pepco Region. “We’ll continue conducting a comprehensive assessment, which we’ll use to strategically deploy crews. We’ll work full force and around the clock until every customer is restored.”

A 2011 national survey reported that Pepco had the least satisfied customers among 225 companies nationwide. Anger from customers in Montgomery County has brought the issue in front of the Montgomery County Council.

Are you without air-conditioning? Has a tree fallen to block your driveway? Upload your pictures of the storm damage to Patch.