Thousands still without power after GTA's 'worst-first' storm

While only a handful of homes in Toronto remain without power, about 50,000 customers in Ontario are still in the dark after Wednesday’s severe storm.

The thunderstorm ripped through Ontario, downing hydro wires, upturning trees, and setting off a number of lightning fires, particularly in Vaughan.

At its peak on Wednesday, 150,000 customers were without power. By late Thursday, Hydro One had restored power to 60,000 households but said it will still be a few days before everything is back to normal.

“Because so many of those repairs involve putting lines back up, putting a new pole in the ground, removing trees, that’s why it’s such a labour-intensive process,” said Hydro One spokeswoman Daniele Gauvin. “We don’t anticipate having everyone back on before Sunday.”

Gauvin attributed the outages to “lightning hits on equipment and 80 to 100 km/h winds.”

“It’s an unprecedented storm,” she said. “The damage is so extensive — there are 300 broken poles between Peterborough and Tweed alone.” There are just 97 kilometres between the two sites.

Environment Canada climatologist Geoff Coulson said this kind of storm is called a “worst-first” because all the worst weather aspects are at the leading edge — rain, hail, gusty winds, lightning. “It can be brief and very intense,” he said.

One particularly bad aspect of this kind of storm is what Coulson calls downbursts, which are very strong winds coming from the core of the storm, at either the front or tail end. These winds “flatten out” when they hit the ground and can cause as much damage as a tornado, he said. It was this kind of wind that was responsible for much of the damage in Coboconk and Minden Hills.

“People were getting disappointed when they were told a tornado was not the cause of damage. But downbursts are dangerous enough to kill.”

Vaughan deputy fire chief Gary Fraser said city saw 15 lightning strikes and seven confirmed fires from the storm.

Much of downtown and central Toronto were spared the worst of the storm but parts of Scarborough and North York felt the effects of lightning and heavy gusts of wind which knocked down trees, branches and power lines.

Up to 10,000 in Toronto were without electricity on Wednesday after the storm.

-- Aleysha Haniff and Galit Rodan, Staff Reporters

Comments

[DPM]

Scary wind at Scarborough Bluffs Wednesday around 7:30pm when my family was out walking. We thought it was a tornado. Cowered behind a large tree as the debris was whipping around us and we could barely stand up against the wind. A beautiful old tree snapped in two like a twig about ten feet from us and then the top snapped off the one we were sheltered against. We ran to the nearest house, big thanks to the locals for taking us into their home to ride out the storm.
I have never felt wind like that before. I went down an hour later to look for my flip-flops and realised four trees/major tree limbs had come down within twenty yards of us. A humbling experience.

[snooty fox]

Amazing, I recall many a vicious lightening storm when
I lived in
T.O very scarry stuff. Glad I wasn't there this time
hope you recover your power soon. Best wishes

[Gilles Lebrun]

I was a victim of the 1998 ice storm. Our family was away from home for 16 days, no power, no water, no heat. I understand that some Hydro One customers might be peeved but, at least, the outages are not in the dead of winter...I am forcing my memory to forget January 1998.