Monday evening’s lightning and thunderstorm played havoc with the electrical grid, causing several power outages across the territory.

Fierce winds that accompanied the storm blew down numerous trees, some coming into contact with transmission lines.

Yukon Wildland Fire Management is reporting 2,800 lightning strikes across the territory as a result of the storm.

Jay Massie, vice-president with ATCO Electric Yukon, said Tuesday they had their full complement of power line technicians out Monday night dealing with the outages.

All the failures were related to trees coming in contact with the power lines, he said, noting it was not the lightning that caused the problems.

“Most of the lightning stayed up in the clouds,” he said. “Anyway, there was no damage from lightning; it was the wind and the trees.”

Massie said crew members worked until they timed out around midnight Monday, as they are only permitted to work a maximum of 16 hours in a day.

Most were expected back in Tuesday afternoon, he said.

As the assessment is not yet complete, Massie said, he can’t say just how many trees came down on the power lines – but there were dozens.

In the area south of Whitehorse, outages were sporadic as the main line stayed on. It was all the lines running into the different subdivisions where the problems occurred, he said.

Massie said there was a big chunk of Porter Creek customers who were out because the main line feeding the subdivision did go out.

As the clean-up continues, ATCO is asking people who see trees that have been damaged by the wind but haven’t come down yet to call the company and report it.

Environment Canada meteorologist Bobby Sekhon said in an interview Tuesday wind topped out Monday at 76 kilometres per hour.

Twelve millimetres of rain were measured at the Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport as a result of the storm.

“Twelve millimetres is almost a third of the monthly precipitation in a day,” Sekhon said, adding that eight of the 12 millimetres fell in just one hour.

The following is a list of outages provided Tuesday morning by ATCO:

• 2,900 customers were affected in the areas of Porter Creek and Takhini. Power was off at approximately 5:30 p.m. and restored by 10:30 p.m.

• 50 customers north of Whitehorse on the Takhini Hot Springs Road, Echo Valley and Hidden Valley were also affected by the power outage; power was restored to these areas by 11 p.m.

• 100 customers south of Whitehorse in the areas of North M’Clintock, South M’Clintock, Army Beach, Mary Lake, Wolf Creek, Judas Creek and Tagish-Taku; power was restored to these areas by 11 p.m.

• There was a minimal number of customers (approximately 35) who were without power throughout the night but crews were responding to remaining outages Tuesday with full restoration to be complete by early in the afternoon.

If customers are still experiencing an outage, they are asked to contact ATCO Electric Yukon at 867-633-7000 or 1-800-661-0513.

Most of the communities served by Yukon Energy experienced outages, though brief.

A tree on the line caused a 14-minute outage in Mayo, affecting 385 customers beginning at 5:01 p.m. Monday, says a summary of outages prepared by Yukon Energy.

Lightning knocked out power to six customers in Haines Junction for two minutes, beginning at 7:59 p.m.

Lightning also caused 14-minute outages beginning at 7:30 p.m. in several of the communities, including Braeburn, Carmacks, Ross River and Faro, and a number of smaller communities such as Little Fox and Drury Creek.