With large, wet snowflakes reportedly continuing to fall across Quebec Sunday morning, more than 100,000 Hydro-Québec customers are without electricity.
As of 10:15 a.m., around 123,000 clients were in the dark, a number that’s been steadily climbing for the past few hours.
Mauricie and Quebec City regions, followed by the Laurentians are affected with most of the outages.
Heavy, sticky snow, says Hydro-Québec, is weighing down tree branches, causing them to take out power lines.
“The damage assessment is still ongoing, so it is still too early to comment on recovery times,” the public utility said in a post to X.
It added crews are working to restore power to customers as quickly as possible.
Many areas across the province, stretching from the west to the east, are under snowfall warnings with accumulations of nearly 15 centimetres which could reach 20 to 30 centimetres in some regions.
Snow warning which could be mixed with rain at times, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) said could add “considerable weight to structures and trees, making them more prone to breaking.”
People are being urged by the agency to consider changing any non-essential travel plans.
According to a preliminary summary released by ECCC, by 8:30 a.m. the downtown Montreal area had already received seven centimetres of snow.
With Quebec City having received 10 centimetres by that time, Trois-Rivières, Shawinigan and Rouyn-Noranda had received 18, 15 and 13, respectively.
