Schools closed, nearly 300,000 without power as spring storm rolls through Quebec

A spring storm bringing heavy, wet snow swept through Quebec overnight, knocking out the lights for nearly 300,000 HydroQuébec customers and shuttering schools in multi‐ ple areas.

All schools under the En‐ glish Montreal School Board, the Lester B. Pearson School Board and the Sir Wilfrid Lau‐ rier School Board are closed due to a mixture of snow and power outages.

Around a dozen schools with Montreal's French school service centre, the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM) are al‐ so closed, as well as some under the Riverside School Board in Longueuil, due to power outages.

As of Thursday morning, Hydro-Québec was logging 1,080 outages, affecting 274,116 customers across the province.

The most affected regions include the Laurentians, with more than 80,000 customers affected, followed by Mon‐ treal and the Montérégie, with more than 69,000 and and 41,000 customers in the dark, respectively.

Tens of thousands of peo‐ ple in the Outaouais, Laval and Lanaudière are also without power.

Many of the outages are caused by heavy snow accu‐ mulating on trees combined with northeast winds reach‐ ing up to 70 km/h in Mon‐ treal that have caused some large branches to sag or snap and come into contact with power lines.

Hydro-Québec spokesper‐ son Cendrix Bouchard says about 1,000 employees are on the ground Thursday morning working to restore power as soon as possible.

He couldn't provide a timeline for when everyone would have electricity back, but he said the good news is that many of the outages are affecting a large number of customers.

"So that means every ac‐ tion that we're going to be taking today is going to have a [big] effect," said Bouchard. Slippery rush hour

The storm is the result of a clash of two weather sys‐ tems, one from Colorado and another from the East Coast.

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) had issued a snowfall warning Wednesday morning for Montreal, saying total snow‐ fall accumulations of 15 to 20 centimetres are expected un‐ til Thursday evening.

Meteorologist Michèle Fleury says the roads during rush hour will be especially slick.

"There's already a few centimetres of snow on the ground and the roads are getting slippery, so we need to be careful for rush hour this morning as the snow will continue to accumulate all through the day but especial‐ ly before noon," she said.

Montreal city spokesper‐ son Phillipe Sabourin says snow removal operators have been working during the night and Thursday morning to clear the roads.

But as many motorists have already removed their snow tires, he is urging peo‐ ple to "take public transit or stay home."

Sabourin says the city will not launch a snow removal operation as the snow is ex‐ pected to melt over the weekend when temperatures climb.

Fleury says other areas, including the Eastern Town‐ ships, Charlevoix and part of Gaspésie, are expected to get between 20 to 30 centime‐ tres of snow.

The weather agency says snow will be heavy and wet at times as temperatures re‐ main near the freezing mark.

The ECCC is warning rapidly accumulating snow could make travel difficult in some locations, adding visi‐ bility may be suddenly re‐ duced at times.