Calm Weather Returns, But It Won’t Last
Posted June 24, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
In case you don’t recognize that bright yellow orb in the sky, it’s called “the sun.”
You might just need a refresher course after Monday’s monsoon-like moments that left the GTA buffeted by drenching rain, damaging winds, snowfall-like hail and even a few suspected funnel clouds. It was a wild start to the week and the 12th day of rain out of the last 13.
But you might call what follows the calm after the storm. For the first time in weeks, a high pressure system has set up over the area, keeping skies clear, the winds calm, and any new disturbances at bay – at least for now. The GTA should bask in temperatures close to the norm of 25C and it may finally feel like summer should on Wednesday, when the mercury soars to 29C.
But it will take some time to wipe out memories of what took place 24 hours earlier. The Bayview Extension at Pottery Road was closed for hours after the deluge caused the Don River to overflow its banks and deep water made the road impassable. Uptown, things weren’t much better. Sheppard Ave. from Keele to the Allen was also shut down for part of the day due to flooding.
Some North York residents were forced to break out the snow shovels in June to clear up several centimetres of hail that pelted their homes, cars and gardens. Others were mopping up flooded basements.
How bad it was for you depended a lot on where you were. Some parts of the city got only a little rain. Others, most especially an already hard hit Thornhill, were drenched by 46 millimetres of precipitation in just a few hours.
And while things will get better over the next 48 hours, we’re not out of the weather woods yet. There’s a good chance we’ll be adding to June’s record rainfall before the month is out next Monday.
By Wednesday night, another system will move in that could give us more thunderstorms and they’re expected to stay right through until Saturday. The humidity will build back in and by Friday, the high of 27C could feel more like 36 with the humidex.
Monday’s incredible torrent may have seemed more like something out of Noah’s ark, but for the lucky few who saw it, it came with an almost Biblical ending. Just before sunset one of the biggest and brightest rainbows seen in years was spotted by some in the downtown core, a fitting end to a day when the GTA saw almost every kind of weather in just a few short hours.
Like the storm itself, the multicoloured marvel faded into the night, giving way to the promise of a brighter tomorrow.
- The streets weren’t the only thing flooded on Monday. Our newsroom was too, thanks to viewers taking their own amazing images of the storm. To check out more than 60 of your photos, see our gallery here.
Check the long range forecast here
Read meteorologist Michael Kuss’s latest blog
