Heavy snowfall, strong winds, and icy conditions have left thousands of BC Hydro customers without power across Metro Vancouver on Friday, Jan. 19.
BC Hydro has been sharing updates on the outages on its X, formerly Twitter account, and on its outage page. As of 9:45 a.m. on Friday, 6,766 customers are without power from 42 outages across the Sunshine Coast and in the Lower Mainland.
In several outages, strong winds toppled trees over power lines. In a Vancouver power outage, a fallen tree left 1,300 customers without power in the Dunbar-Southlands neighbourhood.
Many of the outages have also been caused by the "snowstorm," according to BC Hydro's outage list. Many places across the Lower Mainland received record or near-record-breaking snowfall on Wednesday, with Vancouver International Airport (YVR) receiving just shy of 30 cm.
There is also a risk of freezing rain across the region, which has created treacherous travel conditions.
In a previous interview, BC Hydro spokesperson Kyle Donaldson told V.I.A. that "snow adds extra weight to trees which can sometimes cause them to make contact with power lines."
"Most power outages are caused by trees and adverse weather, including wind, rain, snow, and ice," he said.
While power has been restored to many people, there are still multiple outages across the region in places like Abbotsford, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Langley, Port Moody, Surrey, Vancouver, and West Vancouver.
The Metro Vancouver weather forecast doesn't include more snowfall, but stormy, wet weather may persist through the weekend.
To report a power outage, call 1 800 BCHYDRO (1-800-224-9376) or *HYDRO (*49376) on your mobile or report it online.
Check the BC Hydro power outage map for more information on updates.
