Torrential Rain Disrupts Toronto With Flooding, Power Outages, Canceled Flights

Thunderstorms and torrential rain in Toronto on Tuesday triggered flash flooding in parts of the city that disrupted traffic, caused power outages and canceled flights.

The city saw more rainfall in one hour than the average for July as highways and subways were closed and city streets were engulfed by the floodwaters, CNN reported.

Toronto’s Pearson International Airport recorded roughly 3.82 inches of rain, the airport posted on X — the fifth wettest day recorded in the city. Tuesday’s deluge also smashed the previous daily record of one inch, set in 1941.

Local officials said parts of the city saw nearly four inches of rainfall. At one point, approximately 167,000 residents were without power.

At a news conference Tuesday, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said parts of city hall had flooded, emphasizing that the number of days with similar weather would only increase as the climate crisis continues, reported The New York Times.

“We really seriously have to deal with climate change because these kinds of days are going to be a lot more frequent,” Chow said, as The New York Times reported.

Chow added that the aging infrastructure of the city made it more susceptible to flooding, reported CNN.

Toronto Fire Services processed almost 1,700 calls and responded to nearly 500 incidents from Tuesday morning to about 3 p.m., a post on social media said.

More than 20 car and building rescues were conducted, while more than 50 people had to be plucked from elevators, CNN reported.

All over the world, extreme rainfall and severe storms are happening more frequently due to climate change, according to weather experts, which places a heavy burden on infrastructure that is not designed for that much rain, reported Reuters.

“The challenge is much of the city is not designed to handle this amount of water,” said City Manager Paul Johnson, as CP24 reported.

Cleanup efforts were underway as of Wednesday morning, and major roadways had reopened, reported BBC News.

In a local CTV interview, Chow said things in the city were “almost back to normal,” BBC News reported.

The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority said the city’s waterways and shorelines were particularly flood prone, and with more than a dozen streams and rivers, Toronto is especially vulnerable to floodwaters.

Chow said Toronto was “massively investing” in measures to make sure similar flooding wouldn’t happen in the future.

“There were moments yesterday where our systems were simply overwhelmed,” Johnson said, as reported by CP24. “It is something we continue to work on. I will say, years and years ago, it was a lot worse. We’d have much less storm activity that would cause much more sewage to be discharged. So it is never something we want to see happen from an environmental perspective… But when you get that amount of water in that short a period of time, there is little we can do.”