Torrential rain on Tuesday triggered flash flooding in parts of Toronto, Canada’s financial center, causing power outages, disrupting traffic and forcing airlines to curtail service.
Toronto Hydro, the local power distribution company, said it was responding to scattered outages that it suspected were caused by flooding at a transmission station. At 3 p.m., about 123,000 customers were without power, it said.
At lunchtime, many of downtown Toronto’s normally bustling restaurants were darkened, with kitchen workers and waiters gathered outside, chatting and waiting for the lights to come back. With traffic lights out, cars and delivery trucks backed on city streets, snarling some intersections.
Across the world, intense rain storms are becoming more common because of climate change, weather experts say, putting a heavy strain on infrastructure that in many cities is not designed to handle heavy, sustained downpours.
The Toronto Transit Commission, which operates subway, bus and trolley service, said trains were bypassing Union Station, the city’s main rail terminal. Go Transit, which operates train service to and from Toronto’s suburbs, said the flooding had caused some disruptions.
Parts of the Don Valley Parkway, a major highway running east of downtown, resembled a river soon after the rains began, with images showing cars stalled out in the brownish waters several feet (dozens of cm) deep.
