Strong thunderstorms have knocked out power to thousands of homes and businesses across New Jersey, according to NJ.com’s Power Outage Tracker. The outage tracker, which monitors outage numbers from utility companies in the region, showed nearly 6,900 utility customers across the Garden State in the dark as of 6:45 p.m. Friday. The heaviest pockets of outages were concentrated in areas served by JCP&L. Forecasters from the National Weather Service and AccuWeather said scattered thunderstorms are expected to continue popping up in many areas of New Jersey through the weekend, leading to the pot…