by Bryan Tait
Just under 23,000 NB Power customers are without power as of 8 p.m. Friday.
According to NB Power’s outage website, the biggest cluster of outages continues to be in the central York-Sunbury region, where just over 10,000 customers are in the dark in areas including Fredericton Junction, Hanwell, Fredericton and Tracy.
The second-largest cluster is in Charlotte County and southwest New Brunswick, where 4,500 customers in areas like St. Stephen, Musquash and Waweig.
In Grand Bay-Westfield, the Kennebecasis Valley and Hampton, 1,800 customers were without power.
Just over 2,600 customers are affected in Carleton County.
The Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe area has about 200 customers without power, and the Shediac-Cap-Pelé area has about 700 customers in the dark.
NB Power said earlier in the day they were monitoring a weather system forecast to bring rain and strong winds to southern New Brunswick Friday evening and into Saturday.
A statement from the utility said crews are standing by to respond to outages as conditions are safe.
More than 600 people are ready to go, including crews staged on Grand Manan, Deer Island and Campobello Island.
Much of New Brunswick remains under yellow warnings from Environment Canada.
Saint John, the Kennebecasis Valley, Charlotte County are under rainfall and wind warnings, with total rainfall between 30 and 50 millimetres and wind gusts approaching 110 km/h along the Fundy Coast.
The Moncton area is under a wind warning.
