An acute spell of freezing rain is being blamed for thousands of electricity outages peppering eastern Ontario and southern Quebec.

A woman braces against freezing rain in Ottawa that left a sheen of ice on the Chateau Laurier Hotel on Boxing Day. (Pawel Dwulit/Canadian Press)

Ottawa got 20 millimetres of precipitation Saturday, much of it freezing rain and ice pellets as the temperature hovered around zero.

Thousands of homes in eastern Ontario were without power Sunday, though electricity had been restored in Ottawa by early afternoon.

The worst outages were in a stretch of Ontario midway between Ottawa and Montreal, including Hawkesbury, where 970 homes were blacked out; near Lefaivre, where 1,100 customers weren't expected to get electricity back until midnight; and north of Pendleton, where more than 1,600 homes were in the dark.

Hydro One's online electricity status map showed thousands of outages as far west as Bancroft, Ont.

Hydro-Québec said it was working to restore power to 20,000 customers. Freezing rain fell on the Gatineau area Saturday, while farther east in St-Jérome, Que., 21 millimetres of the precipitation came down Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.

Montreal and Laval got between four and 11 mm of freezing rain Saturday.

The rain caked power lines and trees, weighing them down and causing many to collapse.

Monday's forecast for Ottawa calls for lows of –6 C with a 60 per cent chance of flurries. Montreal should see a low of –5 with a 40 per cent chance of light snow, Environment Canada said.