Britain, Ireland brace for blast of Hurricane Katia

Waves crash over the seafront as a train travels past in Saltcoats, west Scotland Tuesday.  (Reuters/David Moir)

DUBLIN—Tropical Storm Katia shut down roads, bridges and sporting events Monday in Ireland and Britain, where residents braced for the strongest wind gusts in 15 years.

Forecasters in both countries said Monday's gusts would top 125 km/h as the storm — previously a hurricane as it roared across the Atlantic — made driving, shipfaring and even walking dangerous in broad swathes of Ireland, Scotland and northern England.

Most ferry services between Ireland and Britain were cancelled, and fishing boats along the Atlantic coasts of Ireland and Scotland were warned to head into port.

Britain's government forecasting service, the Met Office, told the public to be ready for the strongest winds since October 1996, when the tail end of Hurricane Lili killed five Britons and caused an estimated $250 million of damage there.

The Met Office said winds were averaging 88 km/h while the strongest reported gust so far was 128 km/h at a mountain station in North Wales. Gusts in the Northern Ireland border town of Castlederg reached 118 km/h.

Heavy rainfall was expected to hit the north of Ireland and central Scotland, where Transport Minister Keith Brown reassured travellers that emergency crews were ready to handle accidents, road blockages and power outages.

“Robust contingency arrangements are in place so people should not panic,” Brown said.

The Tour of Britain cycling race cancelled Monday's planned second stage across northern England after deeming the course's most exposed and elevated points too dangerous.

Ireland, which is regularly buffeted by strong Atlantic winds, also warned of exceptionally dangerous driving conditions and the risk of widespread coastal flooding. Towns along Ireland's Atlantic coast last experienced heavy flooding in November 2010.

A bridge spanning a bay in County Donegal, northwest Ireland, was closed Monday as a precaution, while fallen trees obstructed roads in several other parts of the island, including Limerick in the southwest.

Ireland's Electricity Supply Board said its engineers were trying to restore power to about 11,000 homes along the Irish Republic's border with Northern Ireland. Another 2,000 homes in Dublin lost power because of toppled electricity lines.

Authorities in Norway, Sweden and Denmark said they expected gale-force winds to arrive there Tuesday.

Ireland and Britain periodically catch the tail-end of Atlantic hurricanes as they travel northeast with the Gulf Stream and weaken into tropical storms.

The Met Office said Britain and Ireland felt the winds of one former hurricane in 2009, three in 2006, two in 2000, one in 1998 and one in 1996, when Lili's winds topped 145 km/h and brought widespread disruption to Britain and Ireland.

Katia is the second major hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season, forming two weeks ago near the west African islands of Cape Verde. Katia travelled in a C-shape route toward the Caribbean and the eastern United States but didn't reach landfall there, then headed northeast to Europe.

- Associated Press

Rain-packed Tropical Storm Lee forms off U.S. Gulf Coast

Tropical Storm Lee over the Gulf of Mexico on September 2, 2011. (AFP/Getty Images)

MIAMI — A large storm system churning in the Gulf Of Mexico grew Friday into Tropical Storm Lee, beginning a weekend-long assault that could bring up to 50 centimetres of rain in some spots from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle.

The storm was expected to make landfall on the central Louisiana coast late Saturday and turn east toward New Orleans, where it would provide the biggest test of rebuilt levees since Hurricane Gustav struck in 2008.

Residents who have survived killer hurricanes such as Betsy, Camille and Katrina didn't expect Lee to live up to that legacy.

"It's a lot of rain. It's nothing, nothing to Katrina," said Malcolm James, 59, a federal investigator in New Orleans who lost his home after levees broke during Katrina in August 2005 and had to be airlifted by helicopter.

Lee comes less than a week after Hurricane Irene killed more than 40 people from North Carolina to Maine and knocked out power to millions. It was too soon to tell if Hurricane Katia, out in the Atlantic, could endanger the U.S.

By Friday evening, the outer bands of Lee, the 12th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, already began dumping rain over southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi and Alabama.

The storm's biggest impact, so far, has been in the Gulf of Mexico oil fields. About half the Gulf's normal daily oil production has been cut as rigs were evacuated, though oil prices were down sharply Friday on sour economic news.

Federal authorities said 169 of the 617 staffed production platforms have been evacuated, along with 16 of the 62 drilling rigs. That's reduced daily production by about 666,000 barrels of oil and 0.05 billion cubic metres of gas.

Tropical storm warnings were issued from Alabama to Texas and flash flood warnings extended along the Alabama coast into the Florida Panhandle.

The National Hurricane Center said the centre of Lee was about 265 kilomters west-southwest west-southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River on Friday and moving north at 7 kph.

Forecasters say that Lee's maximum sustained winds had increased slightly throughout the day to 75 kph, and could get stronger.

Governors in Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as the mayors of New Orleans and Biloxi, Mississippi, declared states of emergency. evacuations.

The water-logged Lee was tantalizingly close to Texas but hopes dimmed for relief from the state's worst drought since the 1950s as the storm's forecast track shifted east. Forecasters said it could bring drenching rains to Mississippi and Alabama early next week.

On Grand Isle, Louisiana's only inhabited barrier island, people kept an eye on the storm that was already bringing rain there. It's not as frightening as having a Category 2 or 3 hurricane bearing down, said June Brignac, owner of the Wateredge Beach Resort.

"But we're still concerned with all the rain that's coming in, causing possible flooding of the highway going out. If we don't leave, we may be trapped here until it's completely past," she said.

- Associated Press

Powerful typhoon hits China

Nanmadol's arrival in parts of China on Thursday has caused two deaths, four missing, and forced the evacuations of 138,000 people in Fujian Province, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Nanmadol is the 11th and strongest typhoon to hit China this year.


Policemen and residents run as waves from a tidal bore surge past a barrier on the banks of Qiantang River in Haining, Zhejiang province. (Reuters Photo)


Spectators are swept by huge waves while watching tides of Qiantang River at a dike. (Getty Images)


Residents run away as waves from a tidal bore surge past a barrier and a vehicle on the banks of Qiantang River in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. (Reuters Photo)


People walk in a flooded street as Typhoon Nanmadol moves over Checheng, Pingtung County, southern Taiwan. (Reuters Photo)


Partially submerged vehicles are seen as residents walk on a flooded street amid heavy rain brought by tropical storm Nanmadol in Putian, Fujian province. (Reuters Photo)

Southwestern U.S. headed for a ‘perpetual drought’

A family looks on as a dust storm converges on downtown Phoenix, July 5, 2011. (Mark J. Rebilas/US PRESSWIRE)

A 160-kilometre wide dust storm, corn shrivelling in Georgia fields and Texas blackouts are all harbingers of an unstoppable force geophysicists call "perpetual drought."

At least the terrible Dust Bowl years of the 1930s in North America ended, Dr. Richard Seager told the Toronto Star on Thursday. This one won’t.

The U.S. Drought Monitor computer tracking tags the parched conditions in Texas and Oklahoma as an extraordinary drought, with the rest of the stretch from Arizona to Florida not much better.

Losses in Texas alone, to cattle and wheat, could reach $3 billion U.S., state officials said. Rainfall in Oklahoma is 28 per cent of normal.

In parts of Arizona, it’s half of what it should be. The July 5 dust storm, the worst in 30 years, shut down Phoenix Sky Harbour International Airport and coated the city in a crust of dirt.

All 254 counties of Texas have been declared natural disaster areas. In some place, salt buildup on power lines not swept away by rain has caused blackouts.

“The current drought has been running for less than a year,” said Seager of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. The cyclical arrival of the La Niña weather pattern brought it and will eventually move on.

But more ominous and catastrophic is the permanent spike in temperatures that is making southwestern North American too feeble to bounce back.

“Beyond the year-to-year variability, the entire region from California to the southern plains is getting dryer. It may not be more severe than what we have now, but it will be more persistent,” Seager said.

By the middle of this century, he said, the drought state of the southern United States will be permanent.

“There will still be wet years. There will be dry years. But the net flux, which supplies the moisture to the soil, is going to reduce from 20 to 40 per cent.”

Unlike the Dirty Thirties drought, which lasted seven years, the decade-long drought in the 1950s or even the “megadroughts” of the 13^th and 16^th centuries — all of them La Niña phenomena — this one is triggered by man-made gases.

“As long as the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stays where it is, we have a new equilibrium,” said Seager.

Even if all CO² emissions dropped to zero overnight “significant drying would still occur.”

And while farmers have compensated for dry spells since the 1930s with irrigation, it’s an expensive and gasoline-burning way to spread water around.

“As the century progresses, it will be harder and harder to keep the productivity up.”

- Lesley Ciarula Taylor, Staff Reporter

Awesome view of dust storm descending on Phoenix

 

A giant dust storm covers Phoenix on Tuesday, July 5, 2011. (AP Photo/The Arizona Republic, Rob Schumacher)

PHOENIX - A massive dust storm descended on the Phoenix area in the U.S. state of Arizona, drastically reducing visibility and delaying flights as strong winds downed trees and left thousands of residents without power.

PHOTOS: Arizona Central's stunning photo gallery of the dust storm

See more photos of the dust storm

The dust cloud that moved across the Phoenix valley Tuesday night had formed in an afternoon storm in the Tucson area, and then rolled north across the desert before sweeping over the city like an enormous wave, said National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Iniguez.

Radar data showed the storm's towering dust wall had reached as high as 8,000 to 10,000 feet, or nearly 2 miles, he said.

"This was pretty significant," Iniguez told The Associated Press. "We heard from a lot of people who lived here for a number of storms and this was the worst they'd seen."

By the time the dust cloud neared the metropolitan area, it had started to dissolve but it still towered over the city with a wall of at least 5,000 feet, according to the weather service.

KSAZ-TV in Phoenix reported the storm appeared to be roughly wide in some spots. It briefly covered the city's downtown at around nightfall.

The storm was part of the Arizona monsoon season, which typically starts in mid-June and lasts through September.

The National Weather Service says strong winds with gusts of up to more than 95 km/h in some places rapidly moved the dust cloud northwest through Phoenix and the surrounding cities of Avondale, Tempe and Scottsdale. More than a dozen communities in the area also were placed under a severe thunderstorm watch until 11 p.m.

Some 8,000 Salt River Project utility customers were left without power, KNXV-TV reported late Tuesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration said on its website that because of low visibility in the area, no Phoenix-bound flights were allowed to leave Las Vegas or Los Angeles airports until 9 p.m., and flights at the airport were delayed for about an hour.

-- The Associated Press

A dust storm known as a "habub" rolls into downtown Phoenix on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)

Customers sit outside a Starbucks Coffee cafe during a dust storm in Phoenix. (REUTERS/Joshua Lott)

Jason Wallace, right, wears a face mask as he sits with Emily Wallace inside Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. The Wallaces' flight to Tucson was delayed due to the storm. (REUTERS/Joshua Lott)

The storm was part of the annual monsoon season in Arizona. (AP Photo/The Arizona Republic, Rob Schumacher)

A car at Sky Harbour International Airport. (REUTERS/Joshua Lott)

Motorists drive along 16th Street. (REUTERS/Joshua Lott)

Motorists drive along Arizona State Highway 51 during a dust storm in Phoenix on Tuesday evening. (REUTERS/Joshua Lott)

Outlook for first week of summer: rain

Toronto can look forward to a wet first week of summer, forecasters say.

The GTA saw rain, thunder and lightning overnight Tuesday and can expect more of the same for Wednesday, all the way through to the weekend.

Wednesday’s early morning storm began with a lightning show over city skies just before 12 a.m. and brought a thunderous downpour around 2 a.m.

The storm was more boom than bust – there were no reports of damage, as winds were not particularly strong at around 30 to 35 km/h, said Mark Seifert, Environment Canada meteorologist. Toronto Island Airport received just over 10 millimetres of rain.

That’s in sharp contrast to the damage the storm system caused elsewhere. In southwestern Ontario, wind gusts reached 90 km/h, downing trees and power lines in the Leamington area.

But the storm did cause a power outage that affected 1,100 homes and businesses in Toronto’s west end, according to Toronto Hydro.

The power went out at 3 a.m. and came back on at 5 a.m., spokeswoman Jennifer Link said. The outage was caused not by lightning but tree limbs leaning on hydro wires.

Seifert said the rest of Wednesday should be fairly quiet in the GTA, but there is a risk of thunderstorm again in the afternoon and into the evening. A heavier downpour is the main threat with even more rain than Tuesday night predicted, he said.

The rain is expected to continue until at least Saturday.

--Zoe McKnight, Staff Reporter, with files from The Canadian Press

Storm strands Chicago commuters for hours

Travelers sleep in Terminal 2 at O'Hare International Airport, Tuesday, June 21, 2011, in Chicago. Heavy rains across northern Illinois caused the cancellation of hundreds of flights from Chicago's two major airports. (AP Photo/Brian Kersey)

CHICAGO - Thunderstorms and heavy winds pounded the upper Midwest Tuesday night, stranding Chicago commuter train riders for hours, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights, and delaying Vice-President Joe Biden's return to Washington after a fundraiser.

The National Weather Service issued several tornado watches and warnings in the region, forcing staff at O'Hare International Airport to herd frightened passengers into a lower-level baggage claim area. High winds also damaged two hangars at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, injuring at least three people.

Ashley Luthern of Youngstown, Ohio, who was trying to make a connection to Pittsburgh after a flight from Istanbul, was among the hundreds of passengers ushered to safety at the American Airlines terminal at O'Hare.

"At first they said get away from the windows, which is very hard to do in an airport," she said. "They then became forceful in telling us to go down to the baggage claim area."

Karen Ramsey of Williamsburg, Iowa, was trapped at O'Hare after flying in from Cancun, Mexico on United Airlines when her connection to Moline was cancelled.

"It was beautiful down there. Come home to this," Ramsey said.

Biden had been attending a Democratic fundraiser and raising money for an epilepsy foundation in Chicago when the storm struck, delaying his arrival at O'Hare and subsequent return to Washington.

More than 300 flights were cancelled at O'Hare, with incoming and outgoing flights delayed by at least two hours, the Chicago Aviation Department said. More than 30 flights were cancelled at Midway International Airport.

No twister sightings were reported in the area.

In Michigan, WZZM-TV and The Grand Rapids Press reported Wednesday that high winds pulled two hangars off their foundations at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport. WOOD-TV said members of the Civil Air Patrol were preparing for natural disaster training when the storm hit Tuesday night. They took cover in one of the hangars as powerful gusts ripped a door off and blasted some of the service members off their feet. Three suffered minor injuries.

Michael Gillis, spokesman for Chicago's commuter rail network Metra, said one outbound train was stuck for about five hours when a storm knocked a power line onto the rail. After 2 a.m. Wednesday, the train headed back downtown and passengers were asked to find alternative transportation or face an even longer wait for another train.

Two inbound trains remained stranded before dawn Wednesday, and the storm caused numerous other delays and cancellations to the service, Gillis said.

"Since the wind stopped, we've been dealing with various track obstructions," Gillis said.

Some 267,000 customers remained without power in Illinois, particularly in the north where the storm hit hard, Bennie Currie, a spokesman for the utility Commonwealth Edison, said early Wednesday. About 5,600 customers in Chicago still have no electricity, he said.

The storm also delayed play for 1 hour, 44 minutes in the second game between Chicago rivals the Cubs and White Sox. The game at U.S. Cellular Field was temporarily halted in the top of the sixth with one out and the Cubs having runners on the corners.

On Monday, a massive storm forced fans attending a College World Series game in Omaha, Neb. to evacuate the stadium. Sirens blared and fans were ushered to an underground shelter as black clouds shrouded the city.

The game between Florida and Vanderbilt was suspended until Tuesday, with the Gators winning 3-1.

--The Associated Press

Travelers sleep on cots in Terminal 3 at O'Hare International Airport. (AP Photo/Brian Kersey)

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

Extensive storm damage sparks massive cleanup

Multiple power outages are shown on a map on the Hydro One website. Green triangles represent multiple outages. Click for map

In the aftermath of a storm that ripped through Ontario Wednesday, Hydro One has sent out more repair crews than it did following the massive ice storm of 1998.

About 1,300 Hydro One employees were in the field and some 110,000 customers remained without power by midday, said Hydro One spokeswoman Daniele Gauvin.

“Usually to have that number [of employees] out, the whole province would have to be down,” said Gauvin.

“It’s an unprecedented storm,” she said. “The damage is so extensive, there are 300 broken poles between Peterborough and Tweed alone.”

About 150,000 Hydro One customers lost power Wednesday night from around Fenelon Falls and Peterborough all the way to the outskirts of Ottawa.

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

Hydro One restoration staff includes line maintainers, foresters, assessers and even apprentices. Six helicopters have also been sent out. Gauvin said the helicopters are especially helpful in assessing the damage in heavily wooded areas and in flying staff and equipment to remote areas.

“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 Gauvin.

“We don’t anticipate having everyone back on before Sunday.”

Although the GTA was spared the brunt of the storm, Toronto Hydro said it had about 99 active calls as of 2:00 p.m.

A spokeswoman said she expected that there were about 500 customers still without power.

“We’ve held back all crews from any planned construction work today and every available skilled tradesperson is out restoring power,” she said.

About 1,800 Toronto customers were without power at the peak of the storm.

In Maple, Kim Ambrose said Wednesday that lightning had effectively destroyed her neighbour’s roof on Kinloch Cres.

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.

Environment Canada investigators were in the area Thursday determining whether there had been a tornado.

After a muggy day and stormy night, Thursday proved cooler and wet. Environment Canada said 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.

--Galit Rodan, Staff Reporter, with files from Star staff and The Canadian Press

• 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

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)