A significant snowfall, with accumulations of up to 30 centimeters, caused numerous outages on Monday in several regions of Quebec. Hydro-Québec hopes to be able to restore power to the majority of its unfortunate customers by the end of the day, but warns that some subscribers will have to wait until Tuesday for a return to normal.
By Monday morning, up to 112,000 subscribers had experienced power interruptions, but this number gradually declined throughout the day to reach 52,000 by the afternoon. Montérégie was the region most affected by the outages with some 25,750 subscribers still without electricity at 4 p.m. In Estrie, nearly 20,000 subscribers also had to deal with outages.
The fault of the snow
This is the second time in a week that the vagaries of the weather have plunged tens of thousands of Hydro-Québec subscribers into darkness. Last Monday, 150,000 customers were affected by outages due to snow.
At Hydro-Québec, we point the finger at precipitation of waterlogged snow which caused damage to vegetation to explain the high number of outages. “It’s sticky and very heavy snow that falls on vegetation, branches and trees in the most affected regions,” explains Caroline Des Rosiers, spokesperson for Hydro-Québec. “In regions where it is colder and where the storm passes, like in Mauricie for example, it is blowing snow and the network is not affected at all. »
Hydro-Québec has deployed 140 teams to restore power to the most affected regions, but as the storm moves, outages are occurring as others are repaired, Ms.me Roses. “We plan to repair the majority of breakdowns today, but there are still some that will go to tomorrow. »
Hydro-Québec maintains that the robustness of its network is not called into question. “Our network is strong. We do a lot of vegetation control. We doubled investments [dans ce domaine]. We will continue to find avenues for improvement to increase the reliability and resilience of the network. […] It’s always a question of finding a balance between cutting down trees and protecting the network. »
Southern Quebec received the most snow. More than 25 cm of snow fell in several regions, notably in Montreal. Environment Canada predicted that a few more centimeters would fall during the day on Monday and that partial clearing would begin in the evening.
During Sunday evening and Monday night, snow fell at a rate of 2 to 3 cm per hour in southwestern Quebec.
From Tuesday to Thursday, conditions will be partly sunny, but temperatures will be lower.
The federal agency warned that wind gusts of between 50 and 70 km/h could occur along the St. Lawrence Valley.
On the road network, most of the major highways in southern and central Quebec were snow-covered or partially cleared Monday morning, according to Transports Quebec. In general, visibility was good, but it was reduced in some places, particularly on some secondary roads. The Réseau express métropolitain (REM) encountered some technical glitches and its service was disrupted in the morning.
The roads were slippery in several areas, which caused several cars to run off the road.
Plane flight delays were also noted.
With The Canadian Press