High winds knock out power for thousands in Nova Scotia

Tens of thousands of Nova Scotia Power customers are waking up without power on Saturday morning after high winds and rain hit the province on Friday night.

As of 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, the utility's outage map showed there are 102,742 customers without power across the province. At one point, shortly after midnight, as many as 130,000 NSP customers were without electricity .

Estimated times of restoration range from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m.

High winds cancelled and delayed some flights out of Halifax Stanfield International Airport and ferry sailings from North Sydney to Newfoundland have been cancelled for the day.

Nova Scotia Power says they activated its emergency operations centre on Friday, anticipating outages from the stormy weather.

According to a news release from the utility, its emergency centre is a place to coordinate outage restorations and response.

But the utility warned high winds of 80 km/h or more would delay efforts to restore power on Friday night, because it may not be safe for Nova Scotia Power crews to conduct work in a raised bucket truck.

CBC meteorologist Ryan Snoddon said winds were expected to reach 100 km/h in many parts of the province.

MORE TOP STORIES