Hydro-Québec repair crews worked through the night into Tuesday morning as the first significant snowstorm of the season battered southern Quebec, plunging more than 225,000 homes into darkness.
Rapidly Escalating Power Crisis
The utility began reporting approximately 100,000 outages by 10:30 p.m. Monday, but the situation deteriorated rapidly. Within just one hour, that number more than doubled, and by 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, Hydro-Québec was dealing with over 240,000 reported outages across the province.
Regional Impact and Response
In the Montreal area, approximately 50,000 addresses lost power at some point during the overnight hours, with outages scattered across the island. The nearby city of Laval saw about 20,000 affected addresses.
Provincewide, the Montérégie region bore the brunt of the storm's impact with more than 100,000 addresses experiencing power failures.
Hydro-Québec spokesperson Paule Veilleux-Turcotte explained the cause: "This is the first heavy snowfall of the year. As many trees still have their leaves, the combined weight of snow and wet leaves weakens the branches, which break and fall onto the power grid."
Storm Conditions and Forecast
The severe weather system followed Sunday's snow flurries that later turned into freezing rain. Environment Canada had warned earlier Monday that some regions could receive up to 25 centimetres of snow, though Montreal was expected to see a more moderate five to 10 centimetres.
The Montérégie and Estrie regions were forecasted to experience the heaviest snowfall amounts.
Hydro-Québec deployed repair crews to the most severely affected regions and continued monitoring both outage patterns and evolving weather conditions throughout the emergency response.
