Storms knocked out power to thousands

Thousands of customers in the ABC11 viewing area woke up in the dark early Tuesday morning due to several power outages.

At the peak of the outages, over 34,800 were without power according to Duke Energy's website.

More than 5,100 in Wake County were in the dark - around 900 of them were in Raleigh's Cameron Village area, near Hillsborough Street and NC State University.

Raleigh Police said two transformers blew because of the wind. It was unclear what was to blame for the other outages.

Over 1,300 customers in Durham alone were in the dark around Northgate mall, near N. Duke Street and Interstate 85.

And 3,700 were in the dark in Granville County.

Duke Energy crews worked for hours to restore power. By 9 a.m., most of the outages has been fixed.

ABC11 Meteorologist Don "Big Weather" Schwenneker said wind gusts up to 40 mph this morning and heavy downpours could have been to blame.