The strong winds that began in the afternoon of Monday, January 8th—and will continue through Tuesday—have already wreaked havoc on BC Hydro’s grid in Sooke and throughout the southern regions of Vancouver Island.
As of this publication, over 12,000 are without power in the southern island, while in the north, only around 700 have been impacted.
Sooke in particular has been affected by the power outages with BC Hydro’s outage map showing that nearly the entire region has had their power knocked out.
The power was lost in the early morning hours of Tuesday, January 9th and BC Hydro have since updated the situation to indicate that crews are either on their way to begin restoring the power, or they have been assigned and will be attending the outage shortly.
The outages extend up Highway 14, all the way to Port Renfrew with mostly all coastal communities having lost power due to the wind storm.
Parts of East Sooke and Metchosin have also suffered power outages, but within the West Shore and Victoria areas, BC Hydro customers have been largely unaffected.
Related:
- BC Ferries cancels multiple sailings Tuesday morning ahead of looming storm
- Special weather statement issued as polar vortex moves over Vancouver Island
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Two weather warnings extended for ‘very strong winds’ and large waves in Greater Victoria
There is a small outage near Uplands Golf Club and another small outage in the heart of James Bay, but other than that the region hasn’t seen any serious outage thus far.
On the Saanich Peninsula, the Ardmore community has also suffered an outage that has knocked out the power in nearly the entire neighbourhood.
To follow along with BC Hydro’s progress in restoring power to the regions suffering an outage, visit their outage map online.
