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Tens of 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 Interior.
For many, the outages continued overnight. Around 10,000 customers in the Lower Mainland and 5,000 on Vancouver Island were still without power as of 6:30 a.m. PT Tuesday.
In a statement Tuesday morning, B.C. Hydro said a total of 290,000 customers had been affected, the majority of them in the Lower Mainland.
Vancouver Island also saw tens of thousands of customers lose power throughout the day on Monday, while hundreds more experienced outages in the Okanagan and Kootenay regions.
“Today’s strong wind and heavy rain knocked down trees and branches — many of them weakened by the multi-year drought — causing them to contact B.C. Hydro’s electrical equipment,” the company said in a news release Monday.
It said anyone who sees a downed power line should call 911 and stay at least 10 metres away.
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.”
Fire services in the District of Highlands, near Victoria, B.C., posted video of an electric fire sparked by a downed wire during a windstorm on Vancouver Island on Nov. 4, 2024, as a reminder of the need to stay clear of any damaged power lines.
Wind warnings were 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 said in its warnings.
Lisa Erven, a meteorologist with the weather office, said that wind gusts of up to 108 km/h were reported in Victoria.
“Even where there’s not wind warnings, we are still expecting moderate to strong gusty winds widespread through the province,” she said. “This is a storm that’s not just impacting one corner, but really moving through the entirety of B.C.”
‘Potent storm system’
The national government weather agency said a “potent storm system” hit the South Coast after midnight on Monday.
A special weather statement was also issued for Vancouver Island, where Environment Canada was predicting that 70 to 100 millimetres of rain could fall on the mountains of western Vancouver Island.
B.C. Ferries says several sailings were delayed due to weather conditions.
In southern B.C.’s mountain passes, the forecaster had 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 centimetres on Monday,” it adds.
Environment Canada meteorologist Johnson 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 in the mountains.