Winter storm cuts power to over 350,000 Quebec homes

Travel was brutal on Friday across Ontario and Quebec, with hundreds of accidents and numerous road closures. The accident above involved hundreds of vehicles on Highway 402 near London, Ontario. Travel remains very difficult Saturday morning, and not recommended any major highway outside the urban corridors. (OPP Photo)

Travel remains very difficult Saturday morning with widespread blowing snow on open highways. In Quebec, visibility is poor off-island on all highways. The 400 series of highways in Ontario is not recommended, especially the 401 corridor which is under a blizzard warning, and closed west of Cornwall.

The massive winter storm impacting a huge part of eastern North America, continues to rage on this Christmas Eve morning. The powerhouse storm is located east of James Bay early Saturday morning. Very strong surface winds and cold air continue to flow around the mature cyclone.

In Montreal, Friday was a wild weather day to say the least. Strong winds and heavy snow early started the power outages and closed all schools. Winds gusted to over 100km/h in the Quebec City region and heavy wet snow brought down trees on power lines north of the city. As outages climbed, so did the wind speeds in the Montreal region. As of 6am Saturday morning, 361,000 Hydro-Quebec clients are in the dark, with no heat and minus teens in most locations. Hydro-Quebec has had over 1000 employees working throughout the night, but the current weather conditions are slowing the repair work.

Across Ontario, Quebec and the US, over 1 million residents are without power. The strong winds also took down some trees and one light standard across Highway 40 in Montreal during the evening commute.

In Montreal on Friday, the snow changed to heavy rain, with 17mm falling at Trudeau. Around 3pm, a very strong arctic boundary swept the Montreal region, with 90km/h winds and rapidly dropping temperatures. The temperature at my home on Ile Perrot fell from 6C (43F) to 1C (33F) in one minute, with rain changing to snow and even some thunder and lightning for good measure. The total snowfall from both the morning and late evening periods has totaled closed to 20cm for Montreal.

The snow continued overnight, driven by frequent 80km/h wind gusts. Temperatures continue to fall down to the current reading of -10C (14F). The lowest barometric pressure associated with the storm was 974mb at my home, equivalent to that of a category 1 hurricane.

Looking ahead, snow and blowing snow will continue into the afternoon with another couple of centimeters possible in southwestern Quebec. This is primarily from the fierce lake effect snow band off Lake Ontario. Conditions should begin to slowly improve Saturday evening and Sunday, but it will remain breezy and cold with winds in the 40-60km/h range right through Christmas Day and a high of -5C (23F).