Environment Canada has issued wind warnings for several areas in British Columbia, including the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island, and the southern Gulf Islands. The weather agency has alerted the public about a low-pressure system causing strong gusts reaching up to 90 km/h in Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island, expected to persist until Sunday morning. These warnings are issued by Environment Canada when there is a high risk of wind-related damage, such as power outages.
Additionally, snowfall warnings have been issued for the Coquihalla Highway between Hope and Merritt, as well as a mountainous section of Highway 3 in the B.C. Interior. B.C. Hydro has reported numerous outages in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island due to fallen trees affecting power lines, impacting thousands of customers. As of Saturday afternoon, over 3,000 customers are without power in southeast Vancouver, with crews investigating an outage in the Victoria-Fraserview neighborhood. Esquimalt on Vancouver Island is also experiencing an outage affecting more than 1,800 customers.
Environment Canada has also raised concerns about potential flooding from a fall storm system hitting the B.C. coast, which has led to the cancellation of ferry sailings and the swelling of waterways due to high winds and heavy rains. Emergency services reported that eight individuals had to be rescued on northern Vancouver Island near Port Hardy after flash flooding immobilized vehicles trapped by floodwaters and debris blocking a road in both directions.
