Environment Canada has issued wind warnings for parts of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and the southern Gulf Islands. 

The weather agency says a low pressure system is bringing strong gusts of up to 90 km/h to parts of Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island, expected to last into Sunday morning. 

Environment Canada says it issues the warnings when there’s a “significant risk” of damage from high winds, including power outages.

They are also warning of snowfall on the Coquihalla Highway between Hope and Merritt, and on a mountainous stretch of Highway 3 in the B.C. Interior.  

B.C. Hydro says its dealing with a number of outages in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island, where trees have fallen down across wires, affecting thousands of customers. 

The utility says more than 3,000 customers are without power in southeast Vancouver as of 1:15 p.m. PT on Saturday, with crews on site for an outage that is under investigation in the Victoria-Fraserview neighbourhood. 

B.C. Hydro says there is also an outage caused by fallen trees in Esquimalt on Vancouver Island, with more than 1,800 customers without power as of Saturday afternoon. 

Environment Canada warned of flooding from a fall storm system hitting the B.C. coast on Friday, with high winds and heavy rains cancelling ferry sailings and swelling waterways. 

Police said Friday that eight people had to be rescued on northern Vancouver Island near Port Hardy after flash flooding disabled vehicles that became trapped by floodwaters and debris that blocked a road in both directions.