| Comments | Hamilton and Toronto ON, July 26, 2009. A storm cell stalled over the western end of Lake Ontario. Hamilton was hard hit. Waves of thunderstorms pounded the city, leaving citizens with flooded basements and motorists stuck in traffic caused by road closures. The midday downpour turned Red Hill Creek into an angry brown torrent that forced the closure of nearby roads and highways. Water gushed into 7000 basements and power was shut off to thousands of customers. While the Hamilton Airport observed only 28 mm of rain, radar estimates confirmed rainfall amounts in an unofficial gauge totaling 110 mm in two hours - worse than a 100-year storm and one of the most intense short-duration rainfalls on record in Canada. Conditions were made worse because the ground was super-saturated from storms two days earlier. In Toronto, parts of Lakeshore Boulevard near the Exhibition grounds were submerged. To the north, a pair of giant sinkholes swallowed part of Finch Avenue West - big enough to hold a fleet of cars and deep enough to cover a four-storey building. |