As of 11:30 a.m. local time on Thursday, March 12, 2026, approximately 149,000 Hydro-Québec customers remain without electricity following a severe mix of freezing rain and high winds. The extreme weather overnight brought down power lines across the province, with the Montreal, Laurentians, and Montérégie regions sustaining the heaviest impacts. The ongoing outages have forced several school boards to cancel classes for a second consecutive day, including the Lester B. Pearson School Board, the New Frontiers School Board, and the Centre de services scolaire des Patriotes.
The grid disruptions peaked at more than 200,000 outages earlier on Thursday morning before repair crews began restoring connections. While significant, the current infrastructure failure has not surpassed the massive April 2023 ice storm that left 1.1 million customers without power across Quebec and Ontario. Environment Canada maintains active warnings for the region, forecasting high winds and dropping temperatures that could flash-freeze standing water on roadways and trigger further localized outages throughout Thursday afternoon. Farther east, communities including Baie-Comeau and Sept-Îles remain under a snowfall warning with up to 40 centimeters of snow expected.
The hazardous conditions have disrupted major transit systems and local events. Montreal’s light-rail network, the REM, suspended service during the Thursday morning commute due to ice accumulation on cables. Shuttle buses were deployed on the South Shore until train service gradually resumed around 9:00 a.m. local time. The widespread storm, closely tracked by regional science and weather agencies, also prompted the postponement of a Journey concert scheduled at the Bell Centre. According to CityNews, a man in his 80s died in Longueuil following a fall and a possible electrocution related to the severe weather.