A massive windstorm that hit the south coast on the weekend toppled trees on to Hydro lines, knocking out power to almost 2,000 homes in West Vancouver and leaving ferry customers stranded at Horseshoe Bay after two sailings to Vancouver Island were cancelled Sunday night.
North Vancouver was hit with about 75 millimetres of rain over the weekend, while gale force winds gusted to a peak of 91 kilometres an hour at West Vancouver's Point Atkinson on Sunday.
Even higher winds in the Strait of Georgia caused B.C. Ferries to cancel both the 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. sailings to Departure Bay Sunday night, leaving a number of ferry customers stranded.
"We were completely sold out," said Bree Stoddart, manager of the 23-room Horseshoe Bay Motel. "We had many desperate ferry customers. We turned away oodles and oodles of people."
Throughout the ferry system, a total of 40 sailings were cancelled on nine different routes because of the windstorm, said Deborah Marshall, spokeswoman for the corporation. Most of those were sailings out of Tsawwassen.
Wind speeds at Environment Canada's weather station near Highway 1 in West Vancouver gusted to about 44 km/h during the peak of the storm on Sunday.
That meant downed power lines that resulted in about almost 2,000 customers being without power in West Vancouver at various times.
The biggest power outage was to about 1,300 homes on Saturday afternoon, after a piece of equipment malfunctioned at the Lions Bay substation, requiring two electricians to fix it.
Approximately 1,000 more households were without power on Bowen Island during the storm. Power wasn't restored to some of those homes until Monday afternoon.
Firefighters and public works crews in West Vancouver were also busy clearing a large cottonwood tree that fell in the storm, blocking all four lanes of traffic on West Vancouver's busy Taylor Way thoroughfare.
In North Vancouver, damage was relatively minor, including some flooding of the road surface on the lower part of Pemberton Avenue.
Meteorologist David Jones with Environment Canada said it's likely more rain is coming for this weekend, but this time the low pressure system will be "a garden variety fall weather system" rather than a dramatic storm.
