7,000 Nova Scotia Power customers remain without electricity after high winds, rain

Thousands of Nova Scotia Power customers are still without power in the wake of a large weather system that made its way eastward across the province.

As of 6 p.m. AT Saturday, about 7,000 customers across Nova Scotia were without power according to the utility's outage map.

That's down from the around 100,000 overnight, according to Matt Drover, Nova Scotia Power's storm lead for the weekend.

There is a significant outage in the Amherst Shore area, with smaller outages in other parts of the province. The utility said in a tweet that seven poles were damaged in the Amherst area and had to be replaced. 

Amherst Mayor David Kogon said there was a fairly widespread outage in the town and surrounding area.

He said a large commercial area was without power and that created some problems for last-minute shoppers, but he didn't hear any real complaints.

"Most people were expecting a power outage possibility," said Kogon. "They were warned about it with the weather that we had, so it wasn't a huge surprise."

The outage map indicated a  restoration time of 11 p.m. Saturday for most of the outages in the province.

Drover said about 300 people were working to restore power. 

"The majority of the outages were caused by the high winds impacting trees," he said. "In the lot of cases it was branches coming down into our lines, but in some cases full trees came down as well."

The storm system also affected parts of the northeastern U.S., as well as Quebec and Ontario. High winds, rain and storm surge moved across the province overnight Friday and the system affected Cape Breton Saturday morning.

•  If the power or data on your device is low, get your storm updates on CBC Lite. It's our low-bandwidth, text-only website.

Environment Canada warnings have been discontinued for Nova Scotia. 

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