High winds whipped through southern Quebec on Friday, damaging power lines and knocking out electricity to 100,000 Hydro-Quebec clients.
Winds reached 100 km/h and the gusts were hampering the work of power crews.
Gusts also ripped branches from trees, blew down fences, and in one case knocked a restaurant's sign on top of a parked car.
But overall, Montreal got off easy with about 5,000 outages on the island.
Power was restored to more than half of the Montreal clients by mid-morning.
By 3 p.m., just 47,7000 clients in Quebec were without electricity, and power was expected to be restored to most clients by the end of the day.
Dire as that sounds, Quebecers missed the brunt of the storm.
More snow in the U.S.
"Most of the precipitation in the form of snow has gone to our south this year," said Prof. John Gyakum.
"The storms themselves have actually been quite intense as opposed to what we're normally used to for these latitudes."
One million homes and businesses in the Northeastern United States were powerless Friday morning.
The storm cancelled thousands of flights, and caused delays for trains and buses heading to Boston and New York.
17 states declared winter advisories and warnings as they shovelled out from the snow.
In fact, Central Park in New York City is currently buried under 93 cm of snow, enough to break the 114-year-old record for accumulation in a single month.
As for Quebec's long-term forecast, Gyakum says the mild temperatures we're experiencing make it difficult to predict.
