The power is out for thousands of Hydro One customers in southern Ontario on Good Friday morning, including in the Guelph area.
It appears the city itself has been spared outages, although a Guelph Hydro crew worked overnight to restore an outage in the University of Guelph area. But customers throughout the region have started the day without power.
Ice is hanging heavily on branches and on power-lines, as freezing rain continued to fall through the night and Friday morning. Ice is falling off of trees and lines, shattering on icy sidewalks and streets. Lawns are caked with ice, and there is the sound of breaking branches echoing down city streets.
Ontario Hydro is reporting power outages near Guelph. Just west of the city at Woodlawn Road and Wellington Road 32, about 143 Hydro One customers are without power this morning. The outage is currently under investigation, with restoration expected by late Friday afternoon.
Just north of Maryhill, about 10 kilometres from Guelph, an outage zone is affecting another 308 customers. A crew has been dispatched, and again restoration is expected later in the day.
Between Guelph and Elora along Wellington Road 7, another roughly 160 customers are without power.
It appears as many as 2,500 customers are without power in the Centre Wellington area, including around the communities of Elora, Fergus and Belwood. There are 1,400 without power in Belwood alone, and about 730 in an outage zone just northwest of Elora.
Another 180 are without power along Wellington Road 22, southeast of Fergus, with nearly 300 more experiencing outages in other zones around Fergus.
The outages stretch throughout the region south of Guelph. Several hundred in the Puslinch area are without hydro this morning, and Ontario Hydro’s current outage map shows an affected band running from Paisley Road on the outskirts of Guelph all the way south to Highway 401, to a point east of Cambridge. Some 570 customers are impacted by that outage.
Snow flurries are forecast throughout the Guelph area for Friday morning, with clearing by the afternoon. However, winds are expected to gust up to 40 km/h at times.
Motorists and pedestrians should exercise caution, and be on the alert for extremely icy conditions and falling branches.
