Hurricane Fiona slams into Atlantic Canada

Thousands of trees are down in Atlantic Canada after Fiona moved across the region early Saturday morning. Power is out to hundreds of thousands of residents. (Charlottetown Police)

 According to Canadian Hurricane Centre Meteorologist Bob Robichaud, Fiona was going to be an "historic extreme event." Fiona is living up to expectations early Saturday morning as the powerful post-tropical cyclone moves across Cape Breton Island and into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

A spectacular image of Hurricane Fiona moving across Cape Breton Island and into the Gulf of St. Lawrence early Saturday morning. The storm produced the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded on Canadian soil, at 931.6mb. (NOAA)

Fiona made landfall at 4AM AST near Hart Island, between Canso and Guysborough in northern Nova Scotia. A new Canadian record for the lowest barometric pressure in our country, was established shortly after landfall at a weather station on Hart Island, at  931.6mb. Winds have been relentless, gusting between 100 and 150km/h in many locations since late Friday evening, with a peak gust of 202km/h (125mph) reported on Sable Island overnight.

A Halifax neighborhood ransacked by Fiona overnight. (CBC)

There has been widespread damage reported, with hundreds of trees down, many on homes and vehicles. Wires are everywhere according to Charlottetown, PEI police, who are responding to emergency calls only, on one of the "worst nights they have ever seen". Travel is extremely dangerous if not impossible across Nova Scotia.

The only silver lining so far that I can see, is that the storm is moving very quickly, which in the end, may cut down on rainfall and flooding in many locations. Forecasters were expecting 75mm to as much as 250mm of rain with Fiona. That being said, 65mm fell in Halifax already through midnight. We will need to wait until later today for more rainfall data.

In terms of power outages, Nova Scotia Power is reporting 405,000 customers in the dark, Prince Edward Island 82,000, New Brunswick Power 46,000 and Hydro-Quebec 6000. That number is changing by the minute. With winds still howling over 100km/ in Halifax for the last 6 hours, the task to repair the power grid will be daunting until the weather eases. Nova Scotia Power had staged crews in advance of Fiona, with help already in place from New Brunswick, Quebec and Maine.

Early Saturday morning, the center of Fiona was located 255 kilometres northeast of Halifax, moving north at 43km/h. The storm maintained 150km/h winds. The center will move across Nova Scotia early Saturday morning and eventually into eastern Quebec and Labrador later today.