Lightning storm rips across Metro Vancouver, dumping rain, cutting power

VANCOUVER – Just one week after Vancouver’s Celebration of Light fireworks show enthralled hundreds of thousands, Mother Nature demonstrated nothing can match her prowess at lighting up the night sky over Metro Vancouver.

Lightning forked across the region, cutting power to thousands of homes, while torrential rains deluged many areas.

At the height of the storm, more than 38,000 BC Hydro customers were in the dark, with the hardest hit areas including Burnaby, Coquitlam and Port Moody.

As many as 2,300 were still without power early Wednesday morning and the BC Hydro website estimates the lights in some homes won’t be back on until noon.

Grouse Mountain, on Vancouver’s North Shore, was forced to suspend its gondola for about three hours, stranding several hundred people on the mountain top.

The wicked weather is now moving east with Environment Canada issuing a severe thunderstorm watch for the entire Okanagan and Columbia regions, as well as the Arrow Lakes, Yoho and Kootenay Parks and the Kinbasket area along the BC/Alberta boundary.