Over 110,000 Hydro-Quebec customers remain powerless after storm

Just past 1:30 p.m. on Friday, more than 114,000 Hydro-Quebec customers remain without electricity after a powerful storm pummelled the province's southwest on Thursday.

Over half of the customers in Montreal that lost their power had regained it by noon, but over 32,000 remained in the dark.

Outages remained significant in Quebec's Montérégie (46,000) and Lanaudière (24,000) regions.

On Twitter Friday morning, Hydro-Quebec said 400 teams are on the ground to make repairs.

"Teams are currently travelling to the most affected areas to assist in recovery efforts. In 12 hours yesterday, we resupplied 50 per cent of the customers affected by the event," the Tweet reads.

The hydroelectricity company said some of the more "severe" outages could last "a few more days."

It's asking affected customers to unplug energy-intensive devices in their homes to avoid overloading the network when the lights come back on.

A snapshot of the Hydro-Quebec outages map for the Montreal area on the morning of July 14, 2023. (Hydro-Quebec)

Thursday's storm caused flash flooding in Montreal's underpasses and metro stations, and a tornado touched down at the Mirabel airport, about 50 kilometres northwest of the island.

Over 500,000 customers lost electricity at the height of the outages on Thursday. 

Hydro-Quebec confirmed Friday that the current outages are connected entirely to the storm and are no longer linked to the James Bay area forest fires, as was the case Thursday afternoon. 

With files from The Canadian Press.