Thousands of households were left without power on Monday as strong winds battered coastal areas of British Columbia and a large swath of the province’s Central Interior.
On Monday afternoon, the B.C. Hydro outage list showed, at one point, more than 150,000 customers without electricity — the majority of them in the Lower Mainland.
However, Vancouver Island also saw tens of thousands of customers lose power throughout the day on Monday. Hundreds more were experiencing outages in the Okanagan and Kootenay regions.
The utility is warning that customers on southern Vancouver Island, as well as Gambier, Keats, Texada and Bowen islands, they may be without power overnight.
In a notice posted on its website Monday afternoon, B.C. Hydro says it will address outages in order of priority.
“Our first priority is outages involving downed lines and situations posing a risk to public safety,” it said. “Next, crews will focus on restoring power to critical and municipal services, followed by large outages affecting the highest number of customers, and then to smaller outages.”
Wind warnings have been issued for much of the province.
“Loose objects may be tossed by the wind and cause injury or damage. High winds may result in power outages and fallen tree branches,” Environment Canada says in its warnings.
‘Potent storm system’
The national government weather agency said a “potent storm system” hit the South Coast after midnight on Monday, with peak rainfall intensities expected on Monday morning.
Between 40 and 70 millimetres of rain was expected on the North Shore of Metro Vancouver, according to the forecaster, and strong winds are expected until the afternoon.
A special weather statement was also issued for Vancouver Island, where Environment Canada said 70 to 100 millimetres of rain could fall on the mountains of western Vancouver Island.
“I’m more concerned about the winds,” Environment Canada meteorologist Johnson Zhong said, noting that gusts could reach up to 80 km/h in the Victoria area on Monday.
B.C. Ferries says several sailings have been delayed due to weather conditions.
In southern B.C.’s mountain passes, the forecaster has issued special weather statements warning of blowing snow on stretches like the Coquihalla Highway (Highway 5) from Hope to Merritt, and Highway 3 from Paulson Summit to Kootenay Pass.
“Strong south winds ahead of the front and upslope snow will arrive on Monday,” reads the statement.
“Snow accumulations on the highest summits like Coquihalla and Kootenay Pass may exceed 20 cm on Monday,” it adds.
Zhong said that with the snow and strong winds, blowing snow could result in low visibility for drivers on Monday afternoon.
The storm warnings come a little over two weeks after an atmospheric river brought significant rain to the South Coast, which led to the deaths of at least four people after mudslides and floods.
Zhong said rainfall totals for Monday’s storm won’t come close to what happened during the atmospheric river event, but that there could still be localized flooding or mudslides on the mountains.
“This is more of a wind event storm,” he said. “So … what could be [are] some power outages, some broken tree branches.”
