Toronto faces a gusty, freezing night
Posted January 17, 2012 9:14 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Torontonians are facing a windy, freezing Tuesday night in the city.
Environment Canada issued a wind warning calling for gusts of 60 to 90 km/h to hit the city in the early evening. But shortly afterward, it lifted the warning for the GTA, and said the winds would be around 40 to 70 km/h.
The wind warning still applies to Niagara to Long Point and Cobourg to Belleville.
Even without an official warning, folks in the GTA are still contending with wicked winds. The blustery conditions temporarily knocked out power to a section of Vaughan and have been blamed for downing wires and knocking out a traffic light at Queen and York Streets.
The eastern part of the province, including Ottawa and Kingston, is coping with a freezing rain warning and a snowfall warning.
In addition, a special weather statement from Environment Canada warns of a sharp temperature drop during Tuesday evening – which could make for treacherous driving conditions.
“We had a sharp cold front swing through during the evening. Temperatures dropped drastically from a record high of near 10 C at 6 p.m. to 0 C by 8 p.m. and now we are going to stay well below freezing overnight. This could cause some freezing of road and walking surfaces, but the intense winds have evaporated a lot of the moisture off of the roads,” said CityNews meteorologist Adam Stiles.
“At its peak, the wind topped out at 74 km/h at Pearson Airport and 78 km/h at Billy Bishop Airport. That likely rattled a lot of windows here in the GTA, but probably put our roads in much better shape. As we head closer to the morning hours the winds should ease to 30-40 km/h.”
Toronto was under the special weather statement as the city was blanketed by fog Tuesday morning.
But despite the foggy conditions, the city actually broke a temperature record, enjoying unseasonably mild conditions. Toronto hit an unofficial high temperature of 9.7 C, recorded at Pearson Airport.
This beats the old record of 9.4 C, set back in 1994.
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