An overnight winter storm on Jan. 19, 2026, dumped 15 to 20 centimetres of heavy, wet snow across the Maritimes, leaving more than 120,000 Nova Scotia homes and businesses without power. Schools and government offices closed across the region, health services were cancelled, and highways saw multiple collisions.
Heavy snow, heavier damage
The storm arrived Sunday night and intensified into Monday morning. Nova Scotia Power reported about 118,000 customers in the dark by 5:45 a.m.; at the peak, roughly 140,000 had lost power. The utility activated its emergency operations centre and put about 300 employees in the field, but icy roads slowed the work.
The culprit was the snow itself. Wet, sticky snow built up on lines and equipment and dragged trees and branches down onto wires. “Just the extent of the damage due to the heavy, wet snow bringing trees into contact with our power lines, it will take some time for us to restore power to everyone,” said Chris Lanteigne, the utility’s director of customer care, who said the Halifax area and western Nova Scotia were hit hardest.
Public schools across the province closed for the day, as did Dalhousie, Mount Saint Vincent and Saint Mary’s universities — the latter two lost power themselves — along with a number of Nova Scotia Community College campuses. Scores of health-care appointments and services were cancelled, and some flights at Halifax Stanfield International Airport were delayed or cancelled.
Treacherous roads, then a fast melt in Halifax
RCMP warned drivers away from the highways after a series of collisions, including crashes on Highway 104 in Cumberland County and Highway 102 in Colchester County that forced partial closures. Halifax police shut a stretch of Highway 118 outbound, just past Exit 13, after large trucks blocked the road; it later reopened. Environment Canada, noting most of the snow fell while temperatures hovered near freezing, warned people shovelling to take frequent breaks and avoid strain.
By late morning the snow had stopped in Halifax, the temperature sat just above freezing, and plows had downtown streets and sidewalks largely clear — leaving residents like Scott Bunting, out walking his dog Dutch near city hall, to call it “a stunning day.” As the system pulled away from Nova Scotia it moved toward Newfoundland, where much of the island braced for 15 to 25 centimetres of snow with strong winds and blowing snow by Monday evening.
Restoration stretched into Tuesday
Power came back to tens of thousands of customers through Monday, but the tail of the outage was long. By Tuesday afternoon, more than 24 hours after the storm, over 13,000 homes and businesses were still without electricity, most of them clustered along the south shore around Bridgewater, Shelburne and Liverpool. Nova Scotia Power had more than 300 people working in the western region alone, and a fresh handful of customers lost power Tuesday morning when a snowplow struck a pole in Lower Sackville. The utility expected most remaining customers to be back on the grid by Tuesday evening.
