High winds and drenching rains might have stopped BC ferries but not this girls soccer practice in Vancouver Wednesday night. (CBC)

Winds hitting 90 km/h blasted across southwestern B.C. on Wednesday night, knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes and cancelling ferry sailings between Vancouver Island and the mainland.

People in about 12,000 homes were in the dark between the mid-island city of Campbell River and Victoria in the south.

Other outages included:

• 5,200 homes in Delta and Richmond.
• 4,500 in Surrey.
• 4,000 residences in Powell River, about 150 kilometres northwest of Vancouver.
• 4,000 in Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast.
• 2,000 in an area near the University of British Columbia on Vancouver's west side.
• and close to 1,000 homes in West Vancouver.

Almost all power was expected to be restored by noon Thursday at the latest. For several thousand people, the electricity was expected to be on late Wednesday or sometime overnight.

No injuries had been reported due to the windstorm.

The ferry cancellations affected sailings in both directions between Duke Point near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island and the terminal at Tsawwassen, south of Vancouver, as well as sailings in both directions between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay, north of Victoria.

Also stopped due to the dangerously high winds were sailings between Nanaimo and Horseshoe Bay on the mainland north of Vancouver, and a number of sailings to the Gulf Islands from Tsawwassen.

Environment Canada said the storm was not expected to abate until later Wednesday night.