There have been no storms in weeks across the state, so why does the power keep going out in parts of Monmouth County?

The latest outage left hundreds of customers in Belmar in the dark Monday morning, and on Saturday, an outage affected more than 10,000 people in Howell.

For just over five hours Monday morning, an equipment issue left shops like Joe’s Bagel and Grill in Belmar without electricity. By 10:30 a.m., power came back on, and police removed traffic cones near the stoplights.

“The Belmar outage this morning was not related to Howell. That was a cross arm that broke. Why that broke is still under investigation, said Chris Hoenig, spokesperson for JCP&L.

Howell Township in recent weeks has been especially hard hit all under sunny skies.

Squirrels were to blame for the first two outages, both affecting 10,000 customers each, and on Saturday,13,000 more people lost power.

"The one this weekend was out of our Larabie substation that affects Southern Howell. That was a relay or breaker failure that caused that outage,” said Hoenig.

On Monday, contracted crews for JCPL were set up along Georgia Road near the Howell Freehold border for an unrelated assignment.

This project spans about 10 miles. It involves replacing hundreds of poles and cable all to make this region in Monmouth County more storm resilient.

“We are putting in beefier poles, thicker wire, more devices that can help us isolate outages and get customers back online faster,” said Hoenig.

Hoenig says when severe weather returns, projects like these planned over the next three years will keep those storm related outages to a minimum. Upgrades are scheduled to start next year on those two Howell substations to help reduce the risk of these recent sunny-day issues. Belmar’s outage remains under investigation.