Storm knocks out power to thousands across Nova Scotia

A powerful storm that brought heavy rain and high winds knocked out power for thousands of Nova Scotians on Tuesday morning, closing some schools in the Halifax area and cancelling some ferry runs across the province. 

At its peak Tuesday morning, there were more than 25,000 outages.

The biggest outages were in the Clayton Park area of Halifax, Dartmouth and New Ross, as well as parts of the Annapolis Valley.

Only a handful of outages remained as of 10 p.m., according to Nova Scotia Power's website.

Leah Ray, who lives in north-end Halifax, said she was awakened by the storm at about 3:20 a.m. AT.

"We woke up to the most horrific noise. I thought our roof was coming off. We jumped up out of bed and looked out the window and saw the tree down," said Ray.

A large limb of a tree fell across her driveway, smashing the windshield on her neighbour's car.

The Atlantic Coast of Nova Scotia, from Halifax eastward, remained under a rainfall warning Tuesday morning.

A total of 30 millimetres to 50 millimetres of rain was expected by the time the storm tapered off Tuesday afternoon in Cape Breton.

All counties along the Atlantic Coast east of Porters Lake remained under a wind warning Tuesday morning, with southerly gusts of between 90 km/h and 100 km/h.

Several schools cancelled classes Tuesday because of power outages. 

• Check out a list of all the storm cancellations at CBC Storm Centre

Ferry service resumed shortly after 7 a.m. local time Tuesday at the Alderney and Woodside ferry terminals in Dartmouth after power was restored.

Halifax Transit deployed shuttle buses to transport people from both terminals to the Halifax ferry terminal.

The weather forced Northumberland Ferries to cancel two of its crossings Tuesday morning between P.E.I. and Nova Scotia, while Marine Atlantic cancelled crossings between Newfoundland and North Sydney, N.S., for a second day in a row. 

Bay Ferries also cancelled its Tuesday morning crossing between Saint John, N.B., and Digby, N.S.

The entire province was also under a special weather statement from Environment Canada. Wednesday evening through Thursday, a low pressure system is expected to bring possibly more than 15 centimetres of snow, spreading from west to east.

According to the national weather service, there is some uncertainty with the track of the storm, but the Atlantic Coast is expected to see the highest snowfall amounts.