A major winter storm knocked out power to thousands of B.C.Hydro customers, forced one local school to close its doors and made driving treacherous in and around Prince George on Friday.
The snow, rain and sleet began late Thursday night and continued through most of the day Friday, with the temperature hovering around the freezing mark all the while.
Environment Canada issued a snowfall warning for the central interior with upwards of 30 centimetres of the white stuff expect to hit some areas east and south of Prince George by Saturday morning. In the city itself, accumulation was expected to be in the range of 10 to 20 centimetres once the storm was expected to clear early Saturday.
The wet, heavy snow collected on tree branches, weighing them down and putting them in contact with hydro lines, causing a series of power interruptions at times affecting more than 12,100 BC Hydro customers in the city and surrounding areas. Crews were busy repairing the lines and had some service restored in the afternoon, but other sections weren't expected to be back on line until late Friday night.
"It's an all hands on deck kind of effort," Hydro spokesman Bob Gammer said, noting staff were called in from their days off, contractor crews were summoned and a Hydro crew from Vanderhoof was called in to help.
The Hart and Chief Lake Road areas, as well as customers east of the city were the hardest hit by the outages, but pockets of power outages occurred in other parts of the city.
New outages were popping up all afternoon and Gammer said if winds began to gust, it could cause more trees to hit lines and lead to more outages.
Blackburn elementary school was closed on Friday morning due to one of the power outages on the eastern edge of the city, with staff spending the morning getting in touch with parents to let them know about the situation.
Power was also briefly out at the Prince George airport. Other power outages were also reported throughout the Highway 97 corridor including in Quesnel and Williams Lake.
Driving conditions on Highways 16 and 97 in all directions around Prince George were considered poor throughout the day and officials cautioned against non-essential travel.
