Hundreds of thousands still without power as ice storm moves east

Gina Ressler, an Environment Canada meteorologist, explains what to expect from the spring ice storm that will hit Ontario and Quebec.

Freezing rain that coated parts of Ontario in thick layers of ice, downing branches and power lines, left hundreds of thousands of residents without electricity on Sunday as the storm headed east.

More than 350,000 customers were affected by outages early Sunday afternoon, according to Hydro One, Ontario’s provincial utility, and some residents said they couldn’t imagine the lights coming back any time soon.

“At the very end of our driveway, we had a hydro pole completely ripped in half because trees went down and took the wires down,” said Janelle Baker, who lives outside of Bracebridge, Ont., and lost power early Saturday morning.

“Our driveway and our road are completely impassable at this point.”

Baker said she spent Saturday night listening to the sounds of trees crashing down.

“It’s just this intense creaking, and then falling,” she said. “It’s very eerie, almost. You can kind of hear it because we’re out by the water, too, so the ones coming down over the water were very loud.”

When she went outside on Sunday morning, she described the sight as “carnage,” as though a tornado had blown through.

“I’m originally from Nova Scotia, so I’ve seen a lot of pretty crazy weather events, but I’ve never seen anything like this ever before,” she said.

Hydro One said it had restored power to more than 257,000 customers by late Sunday afternoon, but there was still a lot of work to be done.

Kelly O’Loan in Barrie, Ont., was among those who got electricity back, but not before she spent hours manually bailing out her sump pump by candlelight.

“It was a very scary and treacherous night because you could hear the ice against the windows, and any time the wind blew just a little bit, you would hear things move and you’re just praying that the trees don’t fall,” she said.

Provincial police urged people to stay off the roads if possible, saying the melting ice had led to wet, slippery roads and localized flooding.

“If you’re travelling north, expect delays and detours. There’s detours north of Barrie because of downed power lines and fallen trees,” said Sgt. Kerry Schmidt.

Police shared photos of power lines hanging low, pulled down by the weight of the ice that coated them.

In Georgian Bluffs, Ont., along the Georgian Bay, provincial police said a tree fell onto the road and landed on live hydro wires on Saturday night, starting a fire.

A news release from the force’s central division early Sunday said there had been additional calls for service because of the weather, including injuries caused by falling trees.

Environment Canada also issued weather warnings for parts of Quebec, where freezing rain is expected to continue into Sunday evening and Monday, and New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, where it could develop overnight.

Much of the southern half of Quebec remained under winter storm or freezing rain warnings as of late Sunday afternoon, with officials warning of the possibility of slippery and dangerous road conditions, damage to tree branches and ice accumulation.

The national forecaster also said New Brunswick and much of P.E.I. were forecast to be hit with ice pellets and freezing rain beginning Monday morning.

Environment Canada said between five and 10 millimetres of freezing rain were expected to fall over a period of up to eight hours, and warned that similar storms in the past have caused damage to trees, localized utility outages and disruption to transportation.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 30, 2025.