High winds take toll on Greater Toronto Area
Wind brings down trees and traffic signals, causes outages
Strong winds caused dangerous conditions in Toronto on Sunday, including fallen trees, downed wires and flying objects, Toronto police warned.
A special weather statement is also in effect for the City of Toronto, advising of flurries and possibly icy roads.
The Government of Canada website says temperatures are set to fall below freezing early this evening, and there is potential for roads to be icy through Monday morning.
Tree uprooted, transit lights down
High winds uprooted a large tree in front of a Toronto elementary school on Sunday.
Toronto police said the tree at Huron Street and Lowther Avenue brought down some wires. The area, in front of Huron Street Junior Public School, was taped off and officers closed one lane on Huron Street.
High winds also brought down a set of transit signals at Spadina Avenue and Nassau Street on Sunday.
The pole was leaning into live streetcar wires and the 510 Spadina streetcar was temporarily diverted, as crews came in to fix the pole.
PUBLIC SAFETY ADVISORY:<br>City of Toronto<br>-High winds causing dangerous conditions<br>-Wires down, fallen trees, loose objects flying...etc<br>^dh
—@TPSOperationsTree down in Markham
The weather also brought down a large tree branch in Markham, Ont., north of Toronto, which knocked out power to thousands of people for a few hours on Sunday morning.
John Olthuis, manager of customer communications at PowerStream Inc., said about 12,000 customers in Markham lost power starting at 9:20 a.m.
By noon, power had been restored to almost all customers in Markham.
UPDATE: Very happy to report that the vast majority of customer in <a href="https://twitter.com/cityofmarkham">@cityofmarkham</a> have now been restored. Only just over 100 remain. ^jo
—@PowerStreamNewsOlthuis said crews restored power to customers in stages.
"We had a limb come down over a line that was a main feeder," he said.
Olthuis said the utility added crews to get the power restored sooner than expected.
Crews are responding to 109 outages affecting over 8,000 customers. Thank you for your patience.
—@HydroOneThousands of customers without power
Meanwhile across southern and central Ontario, thousands of Hydro One customers were also without power due to high winds, downed trees and power lines.
Dana Gardner, spokesperson for Hydro One, said the utility is working as quickly and safely as possible to restore power, but restoration times depend on the local area.
The outages are concentrated in southern and central Ontario, she said.
She said Hydro One's storm outage maps on its website are updated every 15 minutes.