Nice shots of Venice ... oh wait, that's Toronto!!

[Pixilated]

A storm rolled through Toronto yesterday (Monday) and left the city in a fair amount of chaos ...

[AccountingDrone]

Holy shit! That is some crazy water.

[wolfie]

My power was out from sometime before 14:00 (one of the first 3 outages) until a few minutes before midnight. My ISP was having problems with dialup (modem would connect, but it rejected my ID and password) as late as 5 in the morning (with the message not having been updated since 23:00).

According to radio reports, yesterday's one-day rainfall beat the previous record, set during Hurricane Hazel. In 3 hours, we got within an inch of Hazel's all-day total.

[Crossbow]

I've got friends that headed home from Anthrocon yesterday morning, and I still haven't heard from them. This is seriously not good.

[Pixilated]

Crossbow: I hope your friends either made it home or have someplace comfortable to hole up in while they wait to resume their trip.

Among other things, emergency responders had to go out in inflatables and dinghies to rescue 1,400 people from a GO Train that hit a flooded area. The train itself flooded so badly that people on the first level of each car had to squeeze onto the second level of each car, along with the people who were already on that level ... talk about getting up close and personal. It took rescuers four or five hours, I think, to get everybody off the train.

[Crossbow]

Just heard from my friends: everyone is ok, but they just got power back. They didn't know the extent of the flooding until I sent them the pictures...

[cindybubbles]

My work PC shut off because of the resulting power failure. My house also experienced a few seconds of blackout followed by flickering lights, but that was it. Good thing I live up north, or I would have been caught in the storm for sure!

My sister called from her family's vacation hotel room in Florida to ask how we were holding up. That was very nice of her!

[Pixilated]

The guys that mow Mom's lawn came by yesterday. They did the front and side lawns (we're on a corner lot) and said they'd have to come back "tomorrow" (today) to do the backyard because "it's flooded." Now, it's not visibly flooded but perhaps they just meant the soil was too soggy to try to run a mower over it ...

Well, it just stopped raining (again) about 10 minutes ago. It only rained for about 10-15 minutes ... but it was not a nice gentle spring shower by a long shot. It was a bloody deluge. It suggested the next Flood is imminent; anybody got an ark they're not using??

At this rate it'll be fall before they can get a mower back there.

(I should add that I live a couple of hundred miles away from Toronto -- we're seriously hoping we don't get what they got ...)

[wolfie]

The local papers had a few stories about car issues stemming from the flood. A "no overnight parking" lot got flooded (and the driveway was flooded deeper than the lot), and some people were told by a police officer that there would be no way they'd get a tow truck that night (car blocking travelled lane on a road that's being re-opened trumps disabled car in a parking lot). Apparently the "meter maids" use amphibious scooters, because they got ticketed.

Another (front-page) story dealt with a $200,000 Ferrari abandoned in an underpass. Other cars were getting through, but this lawyer's car had less ground clearance, and he couldn't get traction (probably floated the drive wheels off the pavement). He had to get to Ottawa for a case (immigration), so he left the car and went to the city centre airport - which was closed due to weather. He got a ride out to Pearson, and got the last seat to Ottawa - wound up winning the case.

I don't understand his thinking. He had obviously left enough extra time to try to deal with his car being disabled, arrange alternate ground transportation after finding out the first airport was closed, go through airline check-in procedure, and still get to his appointment on time. Ottawa isn't that far from Toronto, and it's fairly common for airports to be closed during severe weather. He had a fast car available, and had left a fair amount of slack in his schedule - why not DRIVE to Ottawa rather than going downtown to try to get to the airport? Would have kept him away from that underpass.