High winds that blew into central Ontario Monday evening were leaving trees down and causing widespread power outages in our region.

At one point, Hydro One reported tens of thousands of customers had lost power.

In Barrie, PowerStream officials say a short outage around the dinner hour left 9,000 people in the dark.

Repair crews scrambled into action and had that particular outage fixed in short order.

Both power companies are warning that periodic blackouts are possible through the night because of the ongoing wind warnings.

Driving was also expected to be a hazard overnight, after local emergency crews were called to several instances of trees falling onto roads in the windy conditions on Monday evening.

Environment Canada issued wind warnings for much of Southern Ontario for late Monday night and early Tuesday morning. 

An updated list of those warnings can be found here.

Snow squalls are also a possibility into Tuesday morning in communities to the east of Georgian Bay, particularly in the area stretching from Orr Lake and Midland, north to Parry Sound.

Right across the region, temperatures that had been hovering around 14 or 15 degrees on Monday are expected to be sharply lower on Tuesday – closer to the freezing mark.

High water levels have also been a concern in Muskoka following the melt over the past few days.

That has the Ministry Of Natural Resources keeping a close eye on rivers, lakes and streams.

The MNR has increased the water flow through some dams to help ease the risk of flooding.

“The potential does exist for flooding,” said the MNR’s Steve Taylor. “We are monitoring and at this time we don't expect flooding to occur, but we expect river and lake levels to rise.”

Environment Canada says the warm weather won’t last long.