Last night’s storm delivered snow to some parts of Vancouver Island, knocked down trees, brought heavy rain to much of the island and knocked out power for thousands.
At its peak, 150,000 BC Hydro customers were left without power throughout Vancouver Island.
Now, as of this publication, that number is reduced to just over 80,000, with around 280 outages still impacting island residents.
The gale-force winds brought on by the ‘bomb cyclone’ were gusting up to 110 km/h in some areas, which caused these outages by downing power lines, or disrupting the power grid in some way.
Areas that were hit the hardest include much of eastern and western Vancouver Island.
From Sooke, all the way up to Port Renfrew, there are many without power. Similarly, from Nanaimo up to Comox, thousands are impacted.
Of the 80,000 still without power on Vancouver Island, approximately 56,000 are in the northern regions of the island and around 27,000 are in southern regions.
BC Hydro says that restoration efforts are underway to get the power back on for all.
“All available crews and contractor crews will continue to work throughout the day to repair the extensive damage to our system, including broken power poles and downed power lines,” said BC Hydro in a regional alert.
“Crews also have to clear vegetation and trees from roadways to access areas to make repairs, which is taking additional time. We’ll continue to share updates for individual outages on our mobile site.”
They added that for some areas, high winds remain in the forecast today which may cause more issues and outages.
Environment Canada says that winds are still expected to peak at 90 km/h in Greater Victoria on Wednesday morning.
Additionally, tides are expected to be higher than normal, which may lead to minor coastal flooding when combined with the strong winds.
The forecast for Victoria on Wednesday calls for a high of 11°C, with showers throughout the day and an overnight low of 8°C.
