A strong cold front triggered a line of rain showers and gusty winds Wednesday night, bringing brief downpours and knocking out power to thousands of utility customers across New Jersey. As of 8:50 p.m. Wednesday, nearly 5,600 homes and businesses were without power statewide, according to NJ Advance Media’s power outage tracker, which shows the latest data reported by area utility companies. The largest clusters of power outages were concentrated in Middlesex County, with more than 2,400 outages reported in Monroe Township and about 150 in Edison. A few dozen outages were reported in several …