Brief downpour hits the downtown Toronto Tuesday evening
Posted August 28, 2013 8:28 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO – People rushed for cover as a brief but powerful downpour swept through the downtown core Tuesday evening.
Although the rain lasted for only about an hour it managed to drop about 25 millimetres of rain onto the city.
“We had a pretty good downpour that came in through the downtown core,” CityNews meteorologist Adam Stiles explained. “It really intensified once it settled over Toronto.”
The storm managed to strand two taxi cabs in flood waters in the Lower Simcoe tunnel.
“Firefighters rescued some people that were stranded in a taxi cab under Lower Simcoe and the water rose up about four feet, just over a metre,” said Toronto Fire Captain Mike Strapko.
A couple of vehicles were stuck in the water, that is up to the top of the tires of the vehicles.
Stiles said this was more a matter of localized flooding than a repeat of the massive storm that hit the GTA in July which was deemed Ontario’s most costly natural disaster.
“It’s not like what we saw throughout July when we saw 100 millimetres of rain come down in a matter of hours,” he explained.
Lower Simcoe East was closed south of Front Street for several hours while crews pumped the water out of the area.
