Thunderstorms knocked out service to hundreds of BC Hydro customers around Prince George yesterday and many will have to wait until this afternoon to see power restored.

An early-morning lightning strike left nearly 250 customers in the downtown area without power for a few hours.

By 8 a.m., the outage was down to 11 customers but they could remain without service until as late at 11 p.m. tonight.

"We need to get a transformer bank to that location and then install that and that is taking some time, Gammer said Wednesday. "We're hopeful to get it back into operation sooner but just to be on the safe side, we're saying 8 o'clock tomorrow morning."

What's more, another 460 or so customers in the greater Prince George areas lost service during late afternoon thunder showers. While power was expected to be restored in some areas by 8 p.m. last night, others may have to wait until 4 p.m. today, Gammer said.

Prince George was not the only area where there was a lightning caused outage. Gammer said the whole Prince Rupert area was without power for about 8 minutes Wednesday when lightning struck at about 2 a.m