About 250 Toronto Hydro customers and 20,000 Hydro One subscribers are still without power after high winds knocked down power lines, tore up trees and damaged homes across southern Ontario last night.
As of 8 p.m. yesterday, about 10,000 Toronto Hydro clients and 87,000 Hydro One customers were without power.
Toronto Hydro spokesperson Tanya Bruckmueller-Wilson told CP24 Tuesday that crews are aiming to have power restored to everyone by the end of the day but that some customers may be still be in the dark tonight, depending on the extent of the damage. Bruckmueller-Wilson said that most of the outages have been caused by tree and pole damage.
“There are large groups of customers where we can restore streets or neighbourhoods at a time, but what will happen as we get into the morning, it will be the smaller, localized outages that are typical with this type of weather effect,” Bruckmueller-Wilson said.
Toronto Hydro is asking residents to be cautious and steer clear of downed power lines.
Environment Canada said the strong southwesterly winds, which at times caused wind gusts of 90 to 100 kilometres an hour, also brought along unseasonably warm temperatures.
Parts of the province including Toronto, Hamilton and St. Catharines, saw record-breaking daytime highs. The highest recorded temperature at Pearson International Airport on Monday was almost summerlike at 18.3 C, about 13 C higher than the seasonal norm. The previous record (15 C) was set in 1946.
Cooler air is expected to return to Toronto today with temperatures steady around 2 C. Environment Canada is also calling for a 30 percent chance of flurries this afternoon and a low of -3 C tonight.
