Many Quebecers were waking up in the dark on Tuesday with power outages affecting several areas, as high winds continue to sweep across the province.
In the Greater Montreal area, several Lester B. Pearson School Board schools are closed due to those outages including:
As of 7 a.m., there were more than 200,000 homes without power, with numbers climbing throughout the morning and topping 315,000 by 9:30 a.m.
The Montérégie region is being hit the hardest, followed by the Lanaudière, Laurentians and Montreal regions.
Hydro-Québec says the outages are being caused by high winds, with gusts reaching up to 90 kilometres per hour in some areas, and going as high as 120 kilometres per hour in others.
In a notice on its website, Hydro-Quebec says more than 1,100 workers have been dispatched to restore power as quickly as possible.
Several areas of Quebec are under Environment Canada yellow wind warnings, including the Greater Montreal area and along the St. Lawrence valley stretching east along the river all the way to the Gaspésie region.
Simon Legault, a meteorologist with Environment Canada said what we’re seeing is the tail end of a big system that brought really warm conditions to parts of Quebec on Monday.
Legault said the winds, concentrated in the St. Lawrence valley are caused by the warmer air mass from Monday colliding with an incoming mass of cold air.
Legault said wind gusts between 85 and 100 kilometres per hour are expected, with winds expected to die down later Tuesday.
“So everybody is going to get some high winds at some point during the day and maybe [the] evening for the eastern part of the province,” he said.
A previous yellow wind warning affecting parts of the Eastern Townships early this morning has ended.
There is also a snow squall warning affecting parts of the Outaouais region, the Laurentians and the Mauricie, with blowing snow and heavy flurries expected in some areas.
Environment Canada said motorists should prepare for quickly “changing and deteriorating ” road conditions.
Legault said the same system that brought mild temperatures on Monday also caused a severe winter storm to slam into Quebec’s Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, prompting the closure of several schools.
And while the storm there is waning, winds are affecting road conditions with several school boards delaying or cancelling school bus services. The Centre de services scolaire (CSS) de Rouyn-Noranda announced that morning classes were cancelled but daycare services remained open.
