Lightning, hail hammers North Carolina as storms roll through

Areas across central North Carolina were hit hard with lightning and even hail from thunderstorms Wednesday evening and Thursday morning.

After storms moved through Wednesday evening, parts of Wake County and Harnett and Cumberland counties began seeing some hail and lightning early Thursday morning as an intense line of storms moved eastward. ABC11 Meteorologist Don "Big Weather" Schwenneker said there were more than 1,000 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in the area within a 15 minute time period around 6am. A couple of power outages were also reported on Duke Energy's website.

Wednesday night, hail the size of golf balls rained down on several towns, including Youngsville, Oxford, and Zebulon.