Philippe to impact N.S. this weekend but won’t be as strong as Lee: Hurricane Centre

CITYnews halifax \ By Mark Hodgins

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 is forecasting 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 as well as Halifax can expect wind, but not as strong as we saw recently with Lee.

It’s calling for winds gusting to 70 or 80 km/h Saturday night into Sunday morning, likely taking out a few tree branches according to the statement. Rain not expected to be as significant a threat with this storm with most forecast to see around 30 mm.

Nova Scotia Power meantime says it does plan to open its emergency operations centre 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.