Tens-of-thousands Hydro-Québec customers without power Monday
The power outages were impacting customers mainly in Quebec City and the Eastern Townships
Rapidly accumulating heavy, wet snow continued to make travel difficult across the Eastern Townships and the Quebec City region Monday morning. The weight of the snow also caused branches to break and then fall on power lines, leading to tens-of-thousands of power outages across the area.
The number of customers without power stood at nearly 150,000 shortly before 10 a.m. The figure had fallen to 63,097 around 3:30 p.m.
"The passage of a weather system over part of Quebec continues to leave heavy snow on the wires," Hydro-Québec said in a statement posted on its website. "This snow breaks branches and trees which come into contact with the power grid, causing power outages. The regions most affected are the Quebec City area, Estrie, Montérégie, Chaudière-Appalaches and Centre-du-Québec. More than 150 teams are on the ground today to restore service as quickly as possible. Teams are being relocated from less-affected regions to speed up service restoration. Follow the situation on the Outages map by subscribing to alerts about the outage in your area."
No major power outages were reported in Montreal.
Schools closed
Several school service centres had closed their establishments on Monday morning. This was the case for Les Sommets in the Estrie region and for Charlevoix. The Sherbrooke Regional School Service Centre also closed schools for the day.
Winter road conditions
Travel was less than ideal across parts of the province on Monday morning, where heavy snow was causing reduced visibility on the roads. In the Laurentides Wildlife Reserve, visibility was zero on Highway 175 around 8 a.m. The cause? Heavy snowfall. Even though the system in place doesn't bring strong winds to this region, it is really the intensity of the snow that reduces visibility and worsens the conditions.
At 6:30 am on Monday, there were already several vehicles going off the road, especially in the Québec region, due to these difficult road conditions.
This article, written by Perrine Gruson, was originally published for MétéoMedia. It was translated for The Weather Network. Contains files from meteorologist Bertin Ossonon.