HALIFAX -- A powerful nor'easter slashed through the Maritimes leaving thousands without power and disrupting highway and air travel.
Power crews were working to restore electricity Wednesday in Nova Scotia after wind gusts of over 100 kilometres an hour knocked trees onto power lines overnight Tuesday.
Nova Scotia Power said about 50,000 customers had been restored to the grid although 1,300 were still without power by the noon hour local time. Most of the outages were in the Halifax area.
"The worst of the storm is passed, but outages may still occur due to weakened trees falling onto power lines," said utility spokeswoman Caitlin Walker.
"Luckily the winds were powerful for relatively short moments of time last night so our crews were able to make great progress."
The utility said 134 crews including power line technicians, tree trimmers and damage assessors worked on the restorations.
There were fewer outages in neighbouring New Brunswick where about 2,800 customers were still without power early Wednesday. That number had fallen to under 900 by noon.
Environment Canada meteorologist Barrie MacKinnon said wind gusts reached a high of 110 km/hr in the Halifax area with sustained winds in most areas of the province of between 60 and 70 km/hr.
The storm also brought a mix of snow and heavy rain to coastal areas of Nova Scotia and parts of Prince Edward Island and southern New Brunswick.
Heaviest snowfall was recorded in northern portions of New Brunswick which received about 30 centimetres.
That led to the closure of many schools across the province as well as a no-travel advisory for the Trans-Canada Highway from Grand Falls, N.B., to the Quebec border.
The weather system also led to travel restrictions on the Confederation Bridge, linking P.E.I. to the mainland. Traffic was reported as back to normal by 7 a.m.
There were also multiple flight cancellations at the Halifax airport early Wednesday.
MacKinnon said conditions were gradually subsiding.
"It was a good four or five hours of really strong winds . . . now we are into marginal southwesterlies," he said.
MacKinnon said the storm was moving into Newfoundland, which only this past weekend had endured a massive windstorm that caused extensive damage.
"As that frontal trough moves into Newfoundland it's expected to weaken," he said. "Hopefully they won't get the same winds that we (residents of the Maritimes) got, but they are looking at a significant system for them as well."
Rain and freezing rain was forecasted for central and eastern parts of the island.
RCMP in the Rocky Harbour area later reported whiteout conditions along Route 430 near St. Pauls. As a result police said a tractor-trailer had jack-knifed and multiple vehicles had become stuck in the snow.
