High winds knocks out power to thousands of customers across the Maritimes

Strong winds across the Maritimes have knocked out power to tens of thousands of electrical customers in the region.

The bulk of the outages are in Nova Scotia, where nearly 41,000 customers were without power as of 3:30 p.m. local time, while outages affected nearly 27,000 customers in New Brunswick and just over 11,000 in Prince Edward Island.

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The outages in Nova Scotia mainly hit the northern part of the province. along with the Halifax area and the Annapolis Valley.

Environment Canada says all three provinces could experience wind speeds of between 80 and 100 kilometres per hour into the evening.

A rainfall warning was also issued for New Brunswick, where the forecast called for between 40 and 70 millimetres to fall throughout the day.

Meanwhile, ferry service was affected across the region, with Marine Atlantic cancelling its crossings between Port aux Basques, N.L., and North Sydney, N.S.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 11, 2023.