BATON ROUGE - After thunderstorms swept through the area Thursday afternoon, lightning struck a piece of transmission equipment near Corporate Boulevard, leaving thousands without power.

Businesses and traffic lights in the busy area were without power for approximately four hours. Entergy told WBRZ lightning struck a recloser, a device meant to keep power flowing during temporary faults in the system, but it was unable to withstand the strike.

According to Entergy's outage map, over 7,000 customers were without power in the parish.

Friday 6:30 a.m.: Majority of customers affected by the Corporate outage have had their power restored.