Photos: Storm sparks amazing light show in Toronto

Toronto was treated to a spectacular light show Wednesday night.

While there was no tornado, severe thunderstorms rolling through southern Ontario spawned lightning strikes that lit up the dark sky.

The lightning storm knocked out power for more than 20,000 homes and businesses in the province and lightning sparked a fire causing $100,000 in damages at a townhouse in the city's east end, near Sheppard Ave. and Meadowvale Rd.

Take a look at a few of the best shots sent in from readers below. We've also included a couple of videos that captured the intensity of last night's electric storm.

Branches of lightning illuminate the night sky as a bolt strikes the CN Tower. (Mark Adelson)

A bolt of lightning hits the CN Tower. (David West)

(Jon James)

Video: Lightning hits the CN Tower

(Guillaume Caty)

A series of lightning strikes are captured across the city. (Jillian Beatie)

(Michael Ventresca)

(Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star)

Lighting branches across the sky with the DVP in foreground, seen from Don Mills Road. (Rick Madonik/Toronto Star)

Video: Electric storm lights up the city

Lightning flashes over the field during a weather delay in CONCACAF soccer action between Toronto FC and FC Dallas at BMO Field in Toronto. The game was abandoned due to the weather. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)

A lightning bolt is seen over an appartment near St.Clair Ave and Bathurst St. in Toronto. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Vincent Elkaim)

Video: Lightning show

Tropical Storm Harvey makes landfall over Belize

MIAMI-Tropical Storm Harvey has made landfall over Belize and is weakening as it heads to northern Guatemala.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Saturday that Harvey was centred about 72 kilometres south of Belize City, moving west-northwest at about 13 mph (21 kph). Maximum sustained winds were 50 mph (80 kph), down from 60 mph (97 kph) when it made landfall.

The storm is expected to bring as much as six inches (15 centimetres) of rain to parts of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Forecasters say flash floods and mudslides are possible.

-Associated Press

City of Toronto issues the sixth heat alert of the season

Those who have this Simcoe Day off can look forward to a hot one: the City of Toronto has issued a heat alert today.

Temperatures will climb to 33 C today, but will feel more like 37 C. There’s also a piping UV index of 9, or very high, according to Environment Canada.

Toronto Public Health staff monitors its heat health alert system to determine whether a heat alert should be issued . The system compares forecast data to historical weather conditions which have led to increased mortality in Toronto in the past.

Factors taken into consideration include conditions like temperature, dew point, humidity, cloud cover, wind speed and direction.

This is the city’s sixth heat alert of 2011. July was the hottest July on record for the City of Toronto with an average temperature of 24.37, according to Dave Phillips, a climatologist with Environment Canada. That beat out the previous record of 24.3 in 1999.

And the warmest day the city has ever seen was this past July 21, when the mercury rose to 37.9 C. The average temperature for the day was 32 C, which beat out a previous record of 31.5 C on Aug. 1, 2006.

“If you stuck a thermometer in Toronto this past July, it would say well done,” Phillips said.

The warmest temperature ever recorded at Pearson was 98.3 on Aug. 25, 1948.

At the rate we’re going, this summer may beat out the summer of 1955 as the hottest Toronto has ever seen. August is expected to mirror the record-setting July we just had, which was not only the hottest July, but also hotter than any June of August the city has ever seen, according to Phillips.

The average temperature for July and August combined in 1955 was 23.6 C. “We are now at 24.4 C, so we could be a degree cooler in August and still break that record,” he said.

July was certainly one for the books in more ways than one. There were 16 days where the average temperature hit above 30 C, and we usually only have 6. We had 30 hours more of sunshine than average, and we only received 43 per cent of what we’d normally get in terms of precipitation—we had 32.4 mm of rain, when we normally have an average of 74.4. July dragged us through a 14 day dry spell as well.

“It was a scorcher. Toronto was well done, baked, grilled roasted.

“It was the hottest day ever, it was the hottest month ever, I mean, you run out of superlatives talking about this particular month.”

In recent memory, the hottest summer Toronto has seen was 2005. The average temperature for July that year was 24.1. That year also had a number of smog days, with 12.5 in July alone. Phillips said there were probably more than 30 smog days throughout the duration of that summer.

In 2005, there were 10 nights on which the temperature remained above 20 C, compared with the 12 we had last month, which brings us to a trend Phillips said is gaining momentum.

“What’s really different in Toronto these days is the warm nights. It’s a hot time in the old city.”

He chalks the sultry summer nights up to increased urban development.

“The city is just getting warmer and cloudier, there’s more heat being trapped in.”

In terms of heat this holiday Monday, Phillips said we shouldn’t rule out the possibility of a humidex advisory being issued. Right now the humidex sits at 37 C, and advisories are issued when it hits 40 C.

The city is urging people to drink lots of water, go to air conditioned spaces and try to stay out of the sun.

In stark contrast to the sweat bath we’re in now, the lowest average temperature for a Toronto summer on record is 17.7 C, and that was in 1965.

— Sarah Ratchford, Staff Reporter

Thunderstorm rips off part of airport roof in Thunder Bay

(A thunderstorm blew off part of the roof of the Thunder Bay International Airport Wednesday evening. TANYA TALAGA/TORONTO STAR)

Part of the Thunder Bay International Airport’s roof was torn clean off after a bout of thunderstorms hit the area Wednesday night.

No one was injured as a result of the incident, but several cars were damaged.

Staff. Sgt. Sharon Komar with Thunder Bay police said flights were still able to land despite the mishap, but vehicle traffic on the ground was affected slightly due to debris in the parking lot.

Some power lines were down as well, but it is unknown how many people were left without power.

The thunderstorms came in from the west ahead of a cold front. When the storms hit the hot, humid air, they “raced off,” explained Rob Kuhn, a severe weather meteorologist with the Ontario Storm Prediction Centre at Environment Canada.

The storm, which included torrential downpours and intense lightning, also knocked down a tree and a fence in the area, Kuhn said. The damage occurred around 9 p.m.

Kuhn said the cold front was the trigger for the storm. The hot and stable air in the east is what kept the storm going, and the cold front acts as a push for the storm, he explained. Thunder Bay is cooling off as a result, with its humidex advisory “long gone.”

He said this kind of severe weather tends to happen quite often in the spring, summer and fall, when warm, humid and unstable air is provoked by colder air.

Meanwhile, in the GTA, it’s because of the lack of cold front anywhere near us that we haven’t been experiencing heat lightning or storms of any sort, which often go hand-in-hand with hot, humid weather like we’ve been having.

“There’s no trigger,” Kuhn said. “There’s little or nothing at all, nothing strong enough around to try and force a thunderstorm to develop.”

He said for now, we’re stuck in the extreme heat, as all of the cold fronts are further north.

After Thursday’s heat, what’s left of the cold front from the prairies will pass through. Kuhn said there may be slight relief Friday, but it will still be hot and humid. While most people won’t notice much of a change, others might find it slightly easier to breathe.

— Sarah Ratchford, Staff Reporter

Record heat in U.K.; France swelters

Britain recorded the hottest day of the year so far on Sunday, with temperatures hitting 32 C.

Here's a look at how a few people were coping:

Locals cool off in the fountains of Royal Festival Hall in London June 27, 2011. Britain's Met Office issued its first hot weather health alert of the summer, as temperatures soared towards 32C. (Olivia Harris/Reuters)

Children play in a fountain near the Tower of London. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

At Trafalgar Square. (Akira Suemori/AP photo)

People enjoy the hot weather at the beach, on the coast of South Shields, England, Monday, June 27, 2011. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)

But if it was hot in England, it was scorching in Paris, with temperatures hitting 35 C.:

People cool off in fountains in front of the Eiffel Tower on Monday, June 27, 2011 as temperatures in Paris hit 35 C. (THOMAS SAMSON/AFP/Getty Images)

A Parisian and his dog cool off in the Trocadero fountain on Monday. (Michel Euler/ AP Photo)

People sunbathe near the Tuileries garden fountains on Monday. (Jacques Brinon/ AP Photo)

People dangle their feet in the Tuileries fountain on Monday. (Jacques Brinon/AP Photo)

Wild storm downs trees, cuts power in GTA

A man inspects a fallen tree limb near Kingston Rd. and Midland Ave. in Scarborough after a fierce storm swept through the GTA Wednesday evening. (RICK EGLINTON/THE TORONTO STAR)

Toronto Hydro is still working to restore power after a wild storm knocked down trees and power lines in pockets of the city Wednesday night.

Power has been restored in many areas, but remained out Thursday morning in areas of North York and Scarborough.

On Kinloch Cres. in Maple, Kim Ambrose said lightning had effectively destroyed her neighbour’s roof.

The home was surrounded by neighbours and firefighters, who were at the top of a ladder spraying water down into the roofless building, Ambrose said.

“The entire main floor is gone, I’m sure the ceiling has fallen into the rest of the house,” she said.

In Scarborough, power was out around Midland Ave. and several blocks eastward, forcing cars to treat intersections along Kingston Rd. as four-way stops.

At Chine Dr., a massive tree was ripped from the sidewalk, uprooting a power line pole and taking down a fence.

Caroline Colaris was on her way to the airport when the storm hit and pounded her car with hail. When she returned to her home on Chine Dr., she found police tape closing off the street and firefighters dealing with other fallen trees and debris.

“We missed all the excitement,” said Colaris. “But it’s still quite a shock.”

She said she’s never seen a storm so bad in her 20 years in Scarborough. There was no damage to her home, she added, aside from a few scattered flowerpots.

As people from the neighbourhood surveyed the damage, city workers shooed them away from the fallen power pole, calling it unsteady and dangerous.

Just off Brimley Rd., another huge tree lay across Barkdene Hills, its branches jutting upward as high as a power pole.

Returning from a bike ride, Ron Harlow said he didn’t expect such strong gusts of wind and the barrage of quarter-sized hail, even as he watched storm warnings on the news.

“It was pretty scary,” he said.

His nephew, Caleb, 11, said, “It sounded like the windows were going to break.”

Among those with homes badly damaged by the storm was Mark Towhey, Mayor Rob Ford’s policy chief. At 9:25 p.m. he tweeted the city’s 311 information service to say he had been on hold for 35 minutes to report a city tree down on his house and wires, and asking when was a better time to call.

A city staffer operating the 311 Twitter feed apologized and asked him to call again.

Throughout Ontario, about 150,000 Hydro One customers were left without power and many may not get their electricity back until Sunday.

The storms caused damage in Haliburton County and the Kawartha Lakes and there were unconfirmed reports of tornadoes in the Minden Hills area near Peterborough.

After a muggy day and stormy night, Thursday in Toronto will likely be cooler and wet.

Environment Canada predicts a cloudy day, with showers beginning this morning. There’s a chance of thunderstorms late Thursday morning and this afternoon.

Though the agency predicts a daytime high of 25 C, the humidity will make it feel muggier. The overcast weather should clear this evening, with a low of 14 C.

The slightly cooler forecast comes as a relief after Wednesday’s record-breaking weather, with temperatures reaching a high of 33.4 C.

That exceeded the 32.2C record for June 8 set in 1950 and 1959.

The humidex sat at 42, according to Environment Canada. A heat alert and humidex advisory were in effect for the GTA, with a UV index of 8, or very high.

• Got a picture of yesterday's storm, or any damage it caused? Email them to webmaster@thestar.ca or tweet your picture using the hashtag #storm TO or post to our Flickr pool.l

Alyesha Haniff, Staff Reporter, with files from Star staff and The Canadian Press

Doug Sanderson clears a fallen tree limb near his home in the Kingston and Midland Rds. area Wednesday evening. (RICK EGLINTON/THE TORONTO STAR)

Severe storms hit Hamilton area

A fast-moving violent thunderstorm which may have spawned a tornado has cut power to thousands of homes and businesses in southwestern and southern Ontario.

Environment Canada had issued a tornado warning for Hamilton at about 1:30 a.m., which prompted Emergency Management Ontario to issue a "red alert" for the area. People were advised to immediately move indoors and away from doors and windows.

There has been no confirmation of a tornado strike, but Environment Canada meteorologist Rosemary Tabory said two spotters reported "there was a possibility" of a tornado touching down.

"One was on the north side of Hamilton, the other was on Hamilton Mountain West," said Tabory.

She said Environment Canada crews would likely head out in the morning to check for any signs of a tornado.

Environment Canada said the line of severe thunderstorms moved through the region with wind gusts of up to 90 kilometres an hour.

The storm travelled from the Kinkardine area in the north through the Hamilton and Niagara region and Tabory says some damage is reported.

"We’ve had spotters report flooding and report some trees down."

Hydro One said the thunderstorms and strong winds left more than 23,700 customers without electricity.

They included more than 10,000 homes and businesses from Wiarton to Kincardine and east to Dundalk. Another 6,834 homes and business in the Guelph area were affected. Tabory said the fast-moving storm was almost all out of Ontario by about 3 a.m. and heading into the United States.

-- The Canadian Press

Outlook for this summer's weather? Cloudy with a chance of accuracy

Was Tuesday's hot, dry weather a taste of what the GTA can expect this season? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on who you ask. (KEITH BEATY/THE TORONTO STAR)

Canada’s two leading weather forecast services released their predictions for the summer this week, and wouldn’t you know it? They don’t agree.

The Weather Network predicts overall average temperatures and precipitation. Environment Canada, meanwhile, calls for a warmer, drier summer for much of the country and the GTA.

In fact, the entire summer forecast is more like an outlook, they say. The forecast is really not specific, nor does it focus on a single spot. Instead, the summer forecast – er, outlook – simply provides the personality or character for the upcoming season.

“We have three categories. I mean, talk about generalities. It’s either going to be warmer, colder or in-between,” said David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada.

“I would never plan my outdoor wedding ceremony or my crop harvesting based on a seasonal forecast.”

How the summer’s weather will shape up is one of those questions that everyone asks, even though they know that no forecast is 100 per cent accurate, says Chris Scott, a meteorologist at The Weather Network.

“People know you’re going out on a limb on this, they still want your best shot,” he said.

Scott’s prediction is based on the belief there will be some fluctuation in temperatures at the start of the season, such as we’ve seen this week, said Scott.

“People should be prepared for getting those shocks of warm weather where it’s quite hot and then cooling down and often times in between, we do get showers and storms,” he said.

Within those transitions from hot to cool, Scott says Toronto may see a bit more rainfall that usual, but not as much as a couple of years ago when the city experienced a wet summer.

Over at Environment Canada, Phillips is more confident in the temperature prediction than the guesses about rainfall.

“It really blows you out of the water,” he said. “There’s just really not a lot of skill in precipitation forecast. We issue it because people want it.”

Predicting summer rainfall is difficult, said Scott, because you can get a heavy storm in one area of the city, while at the other end, the weather is just fine.

In the end, Scott says meterologists can only go as far as science will take them. They don’t provide a precise forecast for a certain day because it is impossible to do, he added.

Instead they try to glean the future by examining the past. “We’re looking at history, looking at previous years, we’re looking at what’s happened in the spring. We’re looking for clues in the atmosphere and especially the oceans,” Scott said.

Canada is difficult to predict, added Phillips, because the country’s weather is so variable.

Seasonal outlooks are simply a matter of satiating curiosity, Phillips said – especially after a dreary spring like the GTA experienced this year. People want to know if there will be light (and sun) at the end of the tunnel.

Of course, other forecasters can offer varying predictions, he said. Sometimes Environment Canada is right, sometimes it’s wrong, but it handles weather in its own way.

“There are different forecasts out there, just like there are different economic models. There are different weather models too,” Phillips said.

The Weather Network’s Scott agrees. “At the end of the day, no two forecasts are alike.”

--Aleysha Haniff and Amanda Khan, Staff Reporters

Warmer, drier summer forecast for Toronto

Remember last summer? Well, this summer isn't shaping up to be quite as perfect, with the possibility of more smog days.(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson)

Last summer was “the summer of summers,” according to Environment Canada’s Dave Phillips. But while this year’s forecast looks promising, it might not live up to last year’s sunshine and smog-free days.

Phillips, senior climatologist at Environment Canada, offered a prediction that this June, July and August will be warmer than most summers – welcome news after this spring’s dreary weather.

This summer looks like it could have less than normal precipitation, meaning there could be more smog days, Phillips said.

Last summer included eight smog days, much fewer than the average 18 to 20 smog days usually seen each year.

Toronto will definitely see some severe weather but that’s part of a normal summer as well, he said.

“That’s a given. We just don’t know how much and exactly the timing of it,” Phillips said.

Phillips cautioned that this prediction is still preliminary, but it looks like last year’s summer will be hard – but not impossible – to beat.

“I think when you look at last summer, there was so much about it that was good. It was warmer, which we needed. It was wetter, which never gets you into problems especially if it occurs at night. The air quality was good. The number of severe events was down.”

The official forecast will be released on June 1.

--Aleysha Haniff, Staff Reporter