Powell River may have missed the heavy rain from this year’s strongest winter storm yet, but high winds took a toll on travellers and many BC Ferries runs were cancelled.
The storm slammed the north and central BC coast overnight Wednesday, November 11, with heavy rain and gusts measuring 130 km/h. By Thursday morning, the cold front had moved south past the northern Sunshine Coast and dumped 120 millimetres of rain on Vancouver and the Fraser Valley in 24 hours.
“They were calling for heavy rains, but we never got them,” said John Ede, weather observer at Powell River Airport. “We just got the high winds.”
Just 8.2 mm of rain fell that day on Powell River, despite heavy rain warnings, said Ede.
The storm affected BC Ferries runs to Vancouver Island and to Texada Island throughout the day. All sailings between Little River and Westview were cancelled and the storm interrupted runs to Texada Island in the afternoon.
According to BC Ferries, trips that day between Comox and Powell River would have been cancelled regardless of whether the Queen of Burnaby had been in service.
The heavy weather matrix for the MV Island Sky, an open-deck vessel currently servicing the run, actually has greater parameters for sailing in stormy seas than the Burnaby, said a spokesperson for the ferry corporation.
“Had the Queen of Burnaby been in service yesterday, we would have cancelled her sailings also due to the high winds,” said Deborah Marshall, executive director of public affairs for BC Ferries. “We do apologize to our customers for any inconvenience, however safety is our first priority and if we feel it is necessary to delay or cancel a sailing due to weather, it is the prudent thing to do.”
Meanwihle, BC Hydro crews were out Thursday throughout the day contending with trees branches that had fallen across power lines. The public utility reported that its crews attended outages in the 9500 block of Malaspina Road, the 3100 block of Cannery Road and in Lund where 104 residences lost power.
Inside the City of Powell River, outages affecting about a dozen residences were reported in the 6900 block of Victoria Street and the 3200 block of Windsor Avenue.
