Thousands of Nova Scotia residents were without power on Thursday, the fourth straight day crews have had to deal with outages throughout the province.
On Thursday morning, about 12,000 homes and business were without power, according to Nova Scotia Power's online outage report.
By early afternoon on Christmas Day, crews worked to restore connections and the number of homes without power dropped to about 1,500.
Still, as some lines were repaired, others fell down over the afternoon, and the number of powerless customers swelled again to about 5,000.
However, 150 crews were working around the clock, and the utility reported on its website that all service was restored by late Thursday night.
Nova Scotia Power spokeswoman Glennie Langille said Thursday's new outages were mostly caused by strong winds, which knocked trees onto power lines.
Shelburne, N.S., had the largest number of customers still without power, about 1,000.
The first round of power outages came after a power storm swept through the province last Sunday night, knocking out power to about 60,000 customers.
Another round of power outages struck the province on Wednesday, leaving more than 40,000 customers without power.
Wednesday's outages were caused by a combination of salt deposits and light precipitation on power lines.
The combination of salt and moisture can conduct electricity across insulators and cause equipment to fail.
Information about outages, restoration times and safety is available at www.nspower.ca or by calling 1-877-428-6004.
With files from The Canadian Press
