Nearly 15K customers without power as strong winds sweep through N.B. – New Brunswick | Globalnews.ca

As extreme cold weather sweeps through the Maritimes, many households have been left without power on Saturday.

In New Brunswick, nearly 15,000 customers were without electricity as of 3:30 p.m.

In an email, New Brunswick Power said the outages were scattered across the province due to high winds and trees getting into contact with power lines.

“Our crews are currently working safely and efficiently to restore power to impacted customers,” read a statement to Global News.

“Crews are prepared to work in all types of extreme weather conditions and are following extreme cold corporate safety standards and are wearing winter personal protective equipment. Safety is at the heart of everything we do.”

Environment Canada has places the entire province under an extreme cold weather warning, forecasting wind chills as low at -45 and maximum wind gusts of up to 70 kilometres per hour.

According to the weather agency, the lowest temperature in the province was recorded in Mechanic Settlement in Kings County, reaching -32 C from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. Saturday, and a record-breaking -49 wind chill.

In neighbouring Nova Scotia, a record was also broken.

At about 4 a.m., Environment Canada recorded wind chill of -43 at the Halifax Stanfield International Airport, beating the previous 1967 record of -41.

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