Tens of thousands lose power in Montreal area amid thunderstorm

Environment Canada has issued a rainfall warning northwest of Montreal.

Areas on the North Shore of Montreal are impacted by the yellow warning, including Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, Lachute, Mirabel and Blainville.

Other impacted areas include Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Terrebonne, Mascouche, and up to Trois-Rivières and Quebec City.

According to Environment Canada, 50 to 80 millimetres of rain is expected Thursday morning to Saturday afternoon.

“Thunderstorms could develop Thursday afternoon and cause locally higher rainfall amounts,” the department says.

“Some locations may receive total rainfall amounts of more than 100 millimetres by Saturday afternoon.”

Water may accumulate on roads and in low-lying areas, and visibility will likely be suddenly reduced at times, the department notes.

The agency advises individuals to not drive through flooded roadways and to watch for washouts near rivers, creeks and culverts.

4 p.m.

There were over 30,000 addresses in Montreal without power as of 4:25 p.m., according to Hydro-Québec’s outage tracker.

According to Paule Veilleux-Turcotte, spokesperson at Hydro-Quebec, the outages are caused by the storm.

“When lightning comes close to the grid, there’s some protection systems that activate, which comes some causes, some outage,” she told CTV News.

“We had about 55,000 without power, and now we’re at 23,000, meaning that the restoration of the power is going well, but there’s also new outages because the weather event is still ongoing in southern Quebec, so there may be also new outages throughout the province as well.”

According to Veilleux-Turcotte, new thunderstorms and lightning are expected in some areas.

“Our teams are fully mobilized to restore power as soon as possible to our client and clientele,” she said.

Service on the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) and power at the Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport terminal have also been restored, according to Veilleux-Turcotte.

3 p.m.

A ground stop has been issued at the Montreal-Trudeau International Airport due to thunderstorms in the area, according to the FAA website.

More than 42,000 addresses in Montreal were without power as of 2:55 p.m, according to Hydro-Québec’s outage tracker.

Service on the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) has also been impacted by the storm.

According to its social media, interruption of service between Bois Franc and Anse-à-l’Orme station, in both directions, began at 2:13 p.m. due to a power supply issue at Hydro-Québec.

Service was initially supposed to resume at 2:35 p.m. but is now expected to resume at 4:30 p.m.