Blast of winter weather leaves thousands of Quebecers in the dark

A combination of strong winds and heavy snow has left thousands of Quebecers in the dark early Tuesday.

Hydro-Québec says Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Outaouais, Lanaudière and the Laurentians are the regions hardest hit by the power outages.

At the peak of the outages, around 50,000 homes were without electricity in Abitibi-Témiscamingue alone on Monday night.

The public utility issued a statement Monday to say “several teams are at work in the field to repair the breakdowns.”

“It may take several hours to restore power in some areas where the grid has been more damaged or in hard-to-reach places,” Hydro-Québec said.

By 5 a.m. Tuesday, about 10,000 clients still didn’t have power. Electricity is slowly coming back to residences, however.

— With files from The Canadian Press