More than 120,000 homes and businesses in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick were without power late Thursday after thunderstorms and powerful winds swept through the provinces.
Hydro-Quebec was reporting more than 66,000 outages, with about half of them in the Laurentians north of Montreal and about 8,000 each in Western Quebec and in the Montreal area.
The stormy weather that caused the outages was moving east late Thursday, prompting Environment Canada to issue a severe thunderstorm watch for eastern Quebec, including the Quebec City region.
NB Power in New Brunswick was reporting at least 6,000 outages and some structural damage due to "sudden thunderstorms," primarily on the island of Lameque and in the Shippigan and Caraquet areas.
The utility said repair work will continue into Friday and extra crews are bring brought in to assist.
In Ontario, Hydro One's outage map was showing well over 62,000 outages, primarily in cottage country north of Toronto on a line from Parry Sound to the Quebec border.