Thousands are without power after a winter storm brought up to 25 cm of snow to the province.
At approximately 8:30 a.m. there were approximately 20,500 Nova Scotia Power customers without electricity.
The website for Nova Scotia Power’s listed 13,967 customers affected by 248 outages as of 1 p.m.
Cape Breton had the largest outages, with more than 9,000 customers without electricity in Sydney, N.S.
Estimated restoration times vary from Sunday afternoon to late evening.
Nova Scotia Power spokeswoman Andrea Anderson said the outages were caused by the region’s first snowstorm of 2021, which blew across most of the province on Saturday and ended overnight.
“The heavy, wet snow and high winds, they can bring branches down or entire trees down,” Anderson said in an interview Sunday. “Heavy, wet snow and high winds are not our friends.”
Local crews worked through the wintry conditions on Saturday night to restore power, she said. At about 6 a.m. Sunday morning, crews from the rest of Nova Scotia set out to help them.
As of Sunday afternoon, Anderson said about 80 technicians were working to get the lights turned back on.
According to Environment Canada totals, the Sydney airport recorded 18 cm of snow and 17 mm of rain on Saturday.
In New Brunswick, fewer than 540 customers are without power as of 11 a.m., according to the NB Power outage map.
The winter storm brought rain, snow and high winds to both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
About 15-25 cm of snow was expected for most of Nova Scotia, while New Brunswick was forecast to receive as much as 25 cm.
However, more was possible in some areas.
The Greater Moncton Roméo LeBlanc International Airport recorded 21 cm of snow on Saturday.
On Prince Edward Island, people in Charlottetown woke up to nearly 30 centimetres. Accumulations of over 20 centimetres were reported throughout the Island’s central region.
With files from The Canadian Press
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