Power outages left thousands of residents in the dark across central and northern Alberta on Wednesday afternoon, with the Edmonton region among the hardest hit as powerful winds sweep through the area.
Online outage maps from Fortis Alberta and ATCO show hundreds of confirmed and unconfirmed disruptions impacting more than 10,000 customers served by the two utilities.
Near Athabasca, 6,250 Fortis customers were without electricity.
Boyle had 1,788 customers offline, while another 1,946 customers east of Boyle toward Lac La Biche were also without power.
In Strathcona County, roughly 2,000 customers north and south of Cooking Lake had their power returned by 5:30 p.m.
For much of the afternoon, wind Gusts in Edmonton were clocked between 50 and 75 km/h, with stations just outside Edmonton recording peaks of 80 to 95 km/h.A
Additional smaller outages reported include:
- 724 customers in St. Albert’s Grandin neighbourhood, south of downtown
- 129 customers north of Highway 16 near Stony Plain
- 96 customers east of Highway 21 near Looma
- 91 customers north of Miquelon Lake
- 64 customers northwest of Devon and west of Highway 60
- 63 customers at Jackfish Lake, east of Wabamun Lake
- 62 customers along the north shore of Lake Isle
ATCO confirmed outages affecting 110 customers on the south shore of Lesser Slave Lake near Kinuso and 89 customers near Wapiti, south of Grande Prairie.
Environment Canada says the winds will ease overnight. Calmer conditions are expected across Edmonton and surrounding areas Thursday morning, with gusts picking up again to around 30 km/h in the afternoon.
