All of Pinetops was without electricity around an hour early this morning, with power completely restored by 5:30 a.m.

Pinetops Assistant Town Administrator Brenda Harrell said the outage occurred around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, when a large tree fell and brought down three "main power lines" on North Second Street. The town operates its own electric utility, and Harrell said crews got the "majority" of the town's power restored by 1 a.m. All together, a "couple hundred" customers were affected by the outage, Harrell added.

Edgecombe-Martin County Electric Membership Corp. Vice President of Operations Rodney Bradley said around 30 Edgecombe County customers were without power this morning. After a tree brought a line down around 11 p.m., those customers along Bulluck School Road went without power for three to four hours, Bradley said.

Town of Tarboro Electric Utilities Superintendent Brian Mustard said that no power outages were reported in town during the spell of severe weather.

The outages came after the National Weather Service advised Wednesday that Eastern North Carolina was under a tornado watch.

NWS issued the watch for 32 counties, mostly in the coastal plain through this morning. A flash flood watch was posted for the Piedmont and southern mountains.

Most of the severe weather was expected east of Interstate 95. The weather service said severe storms appeared likely in the Wilmington area and along the southeastern coast.