Heavy snow batters New Brunswick, thousands without power

The thick blanket of snow that covered New Brunswick overnight left thousands of people waking up to power failures.

But by Monday afternoon, NB Power reported just 51 incidents affecting 1,387 customers across the province.

Outages in Fredericton dropped to 354 after topping more than 5,000 earlier in the day. The highest number of remaining outages was in Sackville, where NB Power reported 665.

"Crews have made good progress and we expect to have most customers restored by early evening. Incidents affecting smaller amounts of customers will be cleaned up by midnight, barring unforeseen circumstances," said Heather MacLean, a spokeswoman for NB Power.

Heavy snow began falling late Sunday night in the New Brunswick capital. As of early Monday morning, Fredericton and southern York County were still under a blizzard warning.

Environment Canada said as of 4 a.m., 30 centimetres of snow was already reported in the capital city. A total snowfall of up to 40 centimetres was being forecast by Environment Canada for Monday.