Updated Aug 16. at 11:16 a.m.: Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard has reopened between Homestead Road and Estes Drive.
Hundreds of customers are still without power in Chapel Hill, and many of the outages are scheduled to be repaired by late Wednesday evening, according to Duke Energy's outage map.
Chapel Hill's weekly food distribution was also cancelled due to a food supply disruption following the storm.
About three hours after severe thunderstorms with 70 miles per hour winds struck the area around 4 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, several thousand Duke Energy customers in Chapel Hill and Carrboro still did not have power.
An initial estimate given to those impacted by the outage suggested power would be turned on by 7:30 p.m., but that status has been changed to say "repairs and damage assessment underway," as of Tuesday evening.
Approximately 1,000 outages were reported close to downtown Chapel Hill, along with about 700 more near the intersection of Raleigh Road and Fordham Boulevard and about 1,500 in and around Southern Village.
Several hundred more outages have been reported across large swathes of rural Orange County with no estimate of when power would be restored.
The storm and resulting power outage also affected drivers, and Chapel Hill Police and Fire departments responded to several incidents.
