Thursday October 23, 2025 | VICTORIA, BC
Posted by Island Social Trends
With high winds and heavy rain in the forecast, BC Hydro is reminding customers to secure loose outdoor items like patio furniture and decorations and to review what to do if they encounter a downed, damaged or low-hanging power line.
This is about people doing their part to help prevent outages and injuries.
Last November, during a powerful windstorm, a patio furniture cover was blown off a high-rise deck in White Rock. The airborne cover struck a nearby BC Hydro substation, causing extensive damage and around 14,000 customers to lose power.
Driving and downed power lines:
During windstorms, driving can also be dangerous. If a vehicle hits a power pole and a line comes down:
- Stay inside and call 9-1-1. Assume the line is live.
- If safe, drive at least 10 metres away.
- If you must exit due to fire or other danger:
- Remove loose clothing.
- Open the door, jump clear without touching the car and ground at the same time.
- Land with feet together and shuffle (heel to toe) away at least 10 metres.
Weather forecast:
Environment Canada has a few areas on alert. for heavy winds and strong winds tonight into Friday.
BC Hydro says that their in-house meteorologists are tracking an atmospheric river that is forecast to bring 40 to 110 mm of rain to areas from the North Coast to Central Vancouver Island today, with peak rainfall expected in the afternoon and evening.
The Lower Mainland and other South Coast regions may see 30 to 80 mm of rain on Friday.
Strong winds of 60 to 90 km/hr are expected along the North and Central Coast, with gusts of 40–70 km/h across the outer South Coast.
Wind intensity will peak Thursday evening through early Friday, especially around the northern Strait of Georgia, western Vancouver Island, southeastern Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, and the Lower Mainland.
Weather and outages on Thursday evening:
Mid-evening in the BC Lower Mainland and Sunshine Coast area there are currently 1,066 BC Hydro customers without power in the Powell River area and 526 in the Sechelt area, 12 in Vancouver and five in Langley.
Based on the Environment Canada forecast for Greater Victoria (at 9 pm on this Thursday evening) winds were just 10 km/h SE.
- In the Campbell River and Courtenay (tree down across wires) areas, currently about 80 BC Hydro customers are without power.
- In the Port Alberni area about 150 BC Hydro customers are without power (tree down across wires).
- In the Port Hardy area about 100 BC Hydro customers are without power (mud slide).
- On South Vancouver a planned outage is impacting 390 BC Hydro customers in the Sooke area.
Weekend forecast:
A second system may bring additional strong winds on Saturday.
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NEWS SECTIONS: BC HYDRO | WEATHER IMPACTS | POWER OUTAGES