Posted by 
As temperatures plunged from freezing to brutally frigid on Tuesday morning, many Montrealers woke up to find their homes without power.
On January 21, Hydro-Québec reported that a significant outage started around 6:25 a.m., impacting much of the city. As many as 50,000 were initially affected. As of 9:00 a.m., around 35,000 homes out of a total of 1,036,980 remained without electricity.
The hardest-hit areas are in the northern part of the island, including the boroughs of Ahuntsic-Cartierville and Villeray–Saint–Michel–Parc–Extension.
This comes as a polar vortex grips much of North America, with Montreal’s temperatures dropping to a frigid -15 C on Tuesday morning.
The ongoing outage is reportedly caused by equipment damage linked to a manufacturing defect, according to Hydro-Québec’s Info-Pannes page. Unfortunately, no timeline has been provided for when power will be restored.
With the bitter cold posing additional challenges, Hydro-Québec has postponed all planned maintenance outages for January 21 and 22, focusing only on essential and brief interruptions.
Tuesday is expected to see lows of -18 C with temperatures gradually climbing up throughout the rest of the week.
In the meantime, people affected should stay as warm as possible, and be sure to check Hydro-Québec’s website for updates as more information becomes available.
This article’s cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.
AI tools may have been used to support the creation or distribution of this content; however, it has been carefully edited and fact-checked by a member of MTL Blog’s Editorial team. For more information on our use of AI, please visit our Editorial Standards page.
