MONTREAL -- The number of Quebecers without electricity is gradually decreasing after the freezing rain and strong winds that hit the province over the weekend.
At 4:00 p.m. Monday, a little more than 4,800 Hydro-Québec customers were still without electricity, mainly in Montérégie where there were around 60 outages affecting more than 3,300 subscribers.
In the Eastern Townships, the number actually increased to 1,000 from about 640 over the lunch hour.
Hydro-Quebec had as many as 250 employees at work on Sunday to deal with an ice storm that was predicted to be much worse than what finally fell on the south of the province.
Still, at its peak, some 137,000 Hydro-Quebec customers were cut off from service at some point over the past two days.
According to Hydro-Quebec spokesperson Cendrix Bouchard, the Montérégie experienced a perfect storm of strong wind and freezing rain that caused the widespread outages.
He adds the public utility company needed to wait for the winds to die down in order to repair any damages.
There are about 90 homes still in the dark in Montreal.
More snow is expected later in the week.
