Wind Warning issued ahead of Philippe’s arrival late Saturday

By CityNews Halifax staff

An incoming tropical storm is not expected to have the same strength as Lee did when it blew through the Maritimes a couple of weeks ago.

The Canadian Hurricane Centre forecasts tropical storm Philippe to race past western Nova Scotia toward Maine on Saturday night.

A tropical cyclone information statement for Nova Scotia says the southwestern portion of the province and Halifax can expect wind, but not as strong as we saw recently with Lee.

Saturday morning, Environment Canada issued a Wind Warning for areas along the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, including HRM.  The warning says those areas could experience winds gusting to 90 km/h Saturday night into Sunday morning.  According to the statement winds of that strength can toss loose objects and cause tree branches to break. Rain is not expected to be as significant a threat with this storm, with most forecast to see around 30 mm.

Nova Scotia Power says it plans to open its emergency operations centre on Saturday to be ready to respond to any outages brought about by those gusty winds.

Conditions are expected to get better later Sunday morning in the HRM.