What can four inches of flash flood rain do to a city like the Greater Toronto Area? It can drown cars, forcing their owners to abandon them and wade home; it can stall trains, making passengers have to wait to escape onto police boats through windows; it can knock out electricity for 700,000 people; it can close highways and even stop air traffic.
That has been the results of record-breaking rains when a flash flood dropped 100 millimeters of rain, about four inches, which is more than Toronto averages, 74.4 mm, for the entire month of July.
And it’s not always pretty. Naturally enough, the sewers overfill, and that’s what causes the streets to flood and cars to get stuck; but that water can be disgusting. Some if it is brown stinking sludge of the worst order.
One rush-hour train become flooded with such water rising in the cars, while passengers piled into the cars that were elevated higher. “There’s a full-on river on either side of us… We. Are. Stuck. Hard,” twittered passenger Jonah Cait, as reported by McClean’s.
Power outages, meanwhile, have had hundreds of thousands left in the dark.
“There’s not a lot that will change once it starts getting dark,” said Toronto Hydro spokeswoman Tanya Bruckmueller. “It’ll be harder for the crews … they need to be able to identify where the damage is so it’ll take longer in the night.”