Thousands without power as post-tropical storm Lee approaches Atlantic Canada
CBC
Thousands of homes in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are without power as post-tropical storm Lee moves closer to its anticipated landfall.
Lee transitioned from a Category 1 hurricane to a post-tropical storm early Saturday. But CBC meteorologist Ryan Snoddon said we're not out of the woods yet.
"This is going to be a long day here in the Maritimes," he said.
High winds are expected to continue throughout the day and night until they finally begin to let up Sunday morning.
Lee is now expected to make landfall around midday in the southwest of Nova Scotia, near Baccaro Point in the Municipality of the District of Barrington.
Snoddon says winds remain at Category 1 strength of 130 km/h near it's centre and that residents of both provinces should brace for a long day and night.
"These are sustained winds, really howling, especially along the Atlantic coastline," he said.
The storm is moving in faster than expected, says Snoddon.
Top wind gusts so far are in the 90-110 km/h range in southwestern Nova Scotia, and between 30-60 millimetres of rainfall has fallen in that same area.
As of 11 a.m. AT Saturday, over 121,000 Nova Scotia Power customers were without power, with the highest concentration in the Halifax area, the province's South Shore, and the Annapolis Valley.
In New Brunswick, meanwhile, N.B. Power's outage map lists more than 33,000 customers without power.
In a release Saturday morning, Nova Scotia Power said the outages are the result of downed trees and strong winds of up to 100 km/h in the western part of the province, and up to 90 km/h in downtown Halifax.
More than 600 people, including power line technicians and forestry workers, are in the field today, but "conditions are getting worse" and in most cases, power won't be able to be restored until the winds recede, said Nova Scotia Power.
"Especially when winds are above 80 km/h, it isn't safe for our crews to be up in the buckets, so we focus on assessing damage and restoring power from the ground where possible," Matt Drover, the organization's storm lead, said in the release.
This story is part of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a weekly analysis of health and medical science news emailed to subscribers on Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that by clicking here.
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