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Strong winds knocked out power to thousands of Quebec homes on Friday as a powerful storm brought heavy rain and flash freeze warnings to much of the province.
Hydro-Québec outage numbers steadily climbed throughout the morning. As of early afternoon, more than 85,000 customers lacked electricity in the province, the bulk of them in the Eastern Townships, in Montreal and on the South Shore.
Hydro-Québec said heavy winds were knocking down trees, causing the outages. More than 500 workers were out attempting to repair damaged power lines, the utility provider said.
But the worst of the weather was still to come, according to Environment Canada.
A wind warning and rainfall warning covering much of southern Quebec predicted windspeeds of 90 kilometres per hour beginning in the afternoon and stretching into the evening.
A rainfall warning simultaneously covered much of the wind-affected area with between 20 and 40 millimetres of rainfall expected by end of day.
Temperatures are expected to swiftly drop below freezing overnight Friday and some more northerly areas are under flash freeze warnings.