Wind and rainfall warnings have been issued for much of southern and central Quebec from a system that began pushing north from the northeastern United States Sunday evening.
The intense low pressure system is expected to generate periods of heavy rain and winds gusting to 90 kilometres per hour.
Monday morning nearly 200,000 homes and businesses across Central Quebec, Quebec City, the Chaudière-Appalaches, Lanaudière, Laurentians, Montérégie, Saguenay - Lac-Saint-Jean and Eastern Townships were without power.
Hydro Quebec says it had dispatched crews to begin restoring power.
The New Frontiers School Board closed Hemmingford Elementary and Franklin Elementary schools because of the power failures.
CBS News in the United States reports that the system knocked out power to more than one million homes and businesses across the American northeast before moving into Quebec and the Maritime provinces.