Ice storm knocks out power to thousands in Nova Scotia

The storm that has been causing travel headaches for people in eastern Canada left more than 12,000 Nova Scotia Power customers in the dark Monday evening. 

The hardest hit areas include Windsor, Kentville, Waterville, Wolfville, Centreville and other parts of the Annapolis Valley. Amherst is also experiencing outages.

Neera Ritcey, spokesperson for the utility, said Monday's heavy rain in the north of the province is to blame.

“So that, combined with some of the accumulation we saw on trees that was in the form of ice, is now leading to some of these outages because we’re seeing some of the tree branches on lines — just the weight of that is causing some of this damage,” she said.

According to the website, NSP estimates power will be out until at least 7:30 p.m. in some areas, but could be out until 11:30 p.m.

Basil Hall owns Video World, TV & Stereo in New Minas. He said the timing of the outage is terrible, as it's normally his busiest shopping day of the year.

“I went home and got a generator, so we’ve got lights here, but I’m running an electronics store — so you go figure, it’s kind of hard to show off a television when we have no power,” he said.

Hall said the store will stay open but will only be able to take cash until his debit/credit machine is up and running again.

Meanwhile, nearly 45,000 power customers in neighbouring New Brunswick were in the dark on Monday.