The latest news on winter storms complicating holiday travel across Canada

The latest news on storms and other extreme weather conditions that are shutting down power and causing difficult travel conditions at the height of the holiday season across Canada:

10:43 a.m

Nova Scotia Power says more than 90,000 homes in the province have their lights back on and fewer than 14,000 homes are left in the dark.

The private utility’s strike director, Matt Drover, says the outages are mostly concentrated in the western and central parts of the province, where winds topped 70 mph last night.

According to Drover, 300 Nova Scotia Power crew members worked throughout the night to restore power and he expects power to be restored to most homes by the end of the day.

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10:22 a.m

According to Via Rail, nine trains running between Quebec City and Windsor have been grounded due to extreme weather conditions, and some passengers on social media say they have been stuck for over 18 hours without food or water.

The rail service says nine trains are currently stuck due to power outages, trees on tracks and even a tree falling on a locomotive.

Passenger Vee Grunda on the Via train 55, which left Ottawa for Toronto at 3:30 p.m. Friday, says she has been stuck in Cobourg, Ontario, since 11 p.m. last night, with no food, water or communication with staff on board.

Grunda says some passengers are jumping off the train into the snow, and police and paramedics are on board as they wait for an emergency train with food to arrive.

Via Rail anticipates significant service delays in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor today and is urging passengers to check their website before heading to Via stations.

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10:19 a.m

More than 320,000 Hydro Quebec customers are left without power this morning, including nearly 80,000 in the Quebec City area.

In the Côte-Nord region of northeastern Quebec, more than half of Hydro-Québec’s customers are without power, while in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, power outages continue to affect about a third of the utility’s customers.

Quebec City and the city of Saguenay have opened warm shelters for residents without electricity.

Several provincial roads remain closed and a number of ferry crossings along the St. Lawrence River have been canceled due to persistent poor conditions.

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10:03 a.m

According to WestJet, 60 flights scheduled to depart from Toronto Pearson Airport today have been canceled, as well as a flight scheduled for Sunday that was canceled ahead of Christmas Day.

WestJet canceled all flights at airports in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia on Friday, including affected airports in Toronto, Ottawa, London, Ontario, Waterloo, Ontario and Montreal.

WestJet Chief Operations Officer Diederik Pen says the company apologizes for the disruption to holiday travel plans and its teams are trying to restore operations on the ground and in the air.

According to Pen, the extreme and prolonged weather conditions in the BC, southern Ontario and Quebec regions are unlike anything the company has ever experienced.

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9:50 a.m

The lights are out for more than 90,000 electricity customers across Atlantic Canada.

About 41,000 customers in Nova Scotia were still without power late in the morning after strong winds exceeding 70 miles per hour knocked out power for about 104,000 customers.

In New Brunswick, 669 regional outages left about 41,051 customers in the dark.

And on Prince Edward Island, about 10,250 customers are without power, according to Maritime Electric.

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This report from The Canadian Press was first published on December 24, 2022.

The Canadian Press