Lightning knocks out power in capital region

Provincial utility reports more than 1,000 customers without juice due to storm

A lightning storm Thursday night into Friday morning plunged many New Brunswickers into darkness, with the bulk of those affected in Fredericton and surrounding communities.

NB Power’s online outage list reports 1,654 customers in the province were without power as of 7 a.m. Friday morning, with 1,620 of them being in the capital region.

This graphic shows most of the power outages in the province Friday morning were clustered in the Fredericton region. (Graphic: NB Power website)

A more detailed breakdown of the outages notes that 994 of them are in the Fredericton, Lincoln and Rusagonis areas and were caused by lightning.

There were reports of thunder and lightning lasting for hours throughout the night Thursday into Friday morning.

The utility's website reports that all outages are expected to be resolved with power restored before noon Friday, with several of the unplanned outages set to be fixed by 8:30 a.m.

Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.