As storms continue to move across the province, many Manitobans woke up in the dark Tuesday morning, as Manitoba Hydro dealt with a peak of over 15,000 customers affected by hundreds over power outages.
That number dropped to just over 4,000 people affected as of 11:30 a.m. and roughly 1,000 by shortly after 3 p.m. as Hydro spent the day trying to get the lights back on across Manitoba.
Hydro’s Bruce Owen told 680 CJOB’s The News the of those still without power were “individual outages” between Winnipeg and Brandon and in the Virden area.
Owen says extreme weather events like this are becoming more common and their team has to adapt.
“Everything from lightning strikes to tree damage — the same stuff we’ve been seeing pretty much all spring and into the summer,” he said.
“When these large thunderstorms hit, they pack a wallop.”
There’s currently no word as to when power will be fully restored to those remaining without power, and Owen said further outages could be possible as more storms rolled through the province later in the day Tuesday.
“It’s all where it hits with these cells that we’re seeing being develop with it being so humid,” he said Tuesday afternoon.
“There’s always a possibility of an isolated thundershower.
“We’re not out of the woods yet.”
Owen told Global News the Killarney and Morden areas were the hardest hit in the earlier storms, and that crews are out there doing what they can to get customers back online — but inclement weather is making that difficult.
“As the storm system sort of circulates or hovers over that area of the province, we’ll be a little bit limited in how fast we can get people up,” he said.
“If there’s any hint of lightning, we have to wait until it passes, and then we get in there and make repairs.”
–With files from Shane Gibson