Thousands still without power after Monday’s storm
This article was written by the Canadian Press and was published in the Toronto Star on December 31, 2025.
People in parts of Ontario and Quebec were dealing with more messy weather and in some cases blizzardlike conditions on Tuesday as storm fronts continue to hit the area.
Environment Canada warned of nearzero visibility at times in bursts of heavy snow as squalls blew through parts of northern Ontario and west of Toronto.
Large snowfall amounts were expected in a wide swath of southwestern Ontario through Wednesday afternoon that could exceed 50 centimetres by Thursday morning in parts of Huron County and other regions.
Several highways around Timmins, Ont., remained closed Tuesday morning after Monday’s heavy snowfall in the region and ongoing blowing snow advisories. The city also issued an extreme cold weather alert as wind chill temperatures are expected to drop to 28 C overnight.
A winter storm Monday brought freezing rain, blowing snow and strong winds across Eastern Canada that knocked out power to tens of thousands of people in Ontario.
According to Hydro One utility’s outage map, thousands in the province were still without electricity as of Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Environment Canada says some areas northeast of Quebec City and into northern New Brunswick could see between 15 and 40 centimetres of snow along with high winds.
In Quebec’s far north, blizzard conditions were expected to persist at least until midday on Thursday.
Much of Canada has been blasted with a number of weather systems over the past week, ranging from blizzards and cold snaps to freezing rain.
The weather has caused flight delays and cancellations at airports in Montreal, Halifax and elsewhere during the holiday travel period.
Paramedics report having to clear ice and snow to get some people safely loaded into ambulances
This article was written by Morgan Lowrie and was published in the Toronto Star on December 30, 2025.
A winter storm brought freezing rain, blowing snow and strong winds across Eastern Canada on Monday, leading to a surge in 911 calls in Montreal.
Montrealarea ambulance service Urgencessanté said that for a period on Monday morning it received some 100 calls per hour — many for people who had fallen and hurt themselves on icecoated sidewalks.
Spokesperson Valérie Guertin urged people to stay home if possible, and if they had to go outside, she advised them to wear crampons and adapt their driving to the weather.
“Ambulance requests (are) mostly for falls on the ice, traumatic injuries or people with injuries following a fall,” she said in a phone interview.
By afternoon, another spokesperson, Alexandre Sapone, said the call volume had dropped slightly to between 60 and 70 calls per hour, compared to between 40 and 50 in normal times.
Sapone said that in addition to a rise in 911 calls, crews were facing challenges around loading people safely onto ambulances — sometimes requiring paramedics to clear entrances of snow and ice and spread salt or other abrasives on the ground.
Much of southern and western Quebec were under weather alerts for prolonged periods of freezing rain with ice pellets.
And while most of those alerts had been lifted by late afternoon, some areas remained under wind warnings, including Montreal where gusts of up to 90 kilometres per hour were expected.
Vast swaths of the province were also under winter storm warnings, with regions such as Saguenay, Lac StJean and Lower St. Lawrence expecting some 20 to 30 centimetres of snow along with strong winds.
More than 12,000 HydroQuébec clients were without power as of 6 p.m., including some 9,700 homes and businesses in the Laurentians area north of Montreal.
Meteorologist Eric Tomlinson said the precipitation had largely shifted to regular rain by late morning in Montreal — leaving behind five to 10 millimetres of ice — but that freezing rain continued to fall north of the city. He warned that the temperature was expected to drop sharply during the night, which could once again turn surfaces slippery.
Freezing rain, blowing snow and strong winds were in the forecast for many parts of Eastern Canada, from Ontario to Newfoundland and Labrador.
Freezing rain warnings were issued in all four Atlantic provinces, including parts of Newfoundland and Labrador where between 50 to 100 cm of snow has fallen since Christmas Day. Newfoundland Power reported more than 2,500 customers without power Monday morning, mostly along the southwest coast of the Avalon Peninsula.
Environment Canada meteorologist Ian Hubbard said Atlantic Canada is in the path of the same system that brought freezing rain to the Great Lakes region and parts of Quebec, but the impacts won’t be as severe since some of the precipitation would likely fall as rain.
This article was written by Yang Sun and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 24, 2025.
A resident shovels snow after a winter storm in Halifax on Christmas Day in 2024. A Globe analysis found that 38 of the 42 cities with complete temperature data have seen warmer Decembers when comparing recent years to the historical average.
Globe analysis found while most Canadians still get a white Christmas, there has been less snow compared to historical average
Most Canadians still wake up to snow-blanketed streets on Christmas morning. Last year, 76 per cent enjoyed a white Christmas, defined by Environment and Climate Change Canada as at least two centimetres of snow on the ground by 7 a.m. on Dec. 25. But the experience of trudging through knee-deep drifts is becoming less likely as Decembers grow warmer and snowfall declines.
A Globe and Mail analysis of 50 years of weather data from 43 cities and ski destinations shows that while white Christmases remain frequent, snow depth is shrinking. In the past five years, 27 locations have seen thinner snowpacks – accumulated snow – compared with their long-term averages, calculated from 1975 to 2024.
The steepest declines are in places that Canadians often associate with winter wonderlands. Banff and Whistler, two of the country’s most famous ski destinations, have experienced some of the largest Christmas Day snow losses on the ground among all cities studied. That does not mean a snowless Christmas in the mountains. Both destinations still record snow on most Dec. 25s, easily clearing the two-centimetre threshold. But the data show that the snowpack is, on average, noticeably shallower than it was a few decades ago.
A similar pattern appears in several Quebec cities along the northern stretch of the St. Lawrence River, traditionally a cold and snowy corridor. These communities still see white Christmases most years, but the depth of snow on the ground has been trending downward at a relatively faster pace than in most other cities analyzed by The Globe.
The thinning snow is closely tied to rising December temperatures. Studies have linked the reduction in snowpack to humancaused global warming, and showed that even a modest increase in temperature could translate into a major reduction in snowpack. The Globe’s analysis found that 38 of the 42 cities with complete temperature data have experienced warmer Decembers when comparing recent years to the historical average.
Snow accumulated on the ground is primarily influenced by temperature and the amount of snowfall. Precipitation almost always starts as snow high in the clouds. Whether it reaches the ground as snow or rain depends on the temperature of the atmosphere layers it falls through. If the lower layers are warm, the snow melts into rain. If the air stays cold all the way down, it remains snow, said Lawrence Mudryk, a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Dr. Mudryk attributes the shift toward more rain than snow throughout the winter to climate change. “What you might see more of in the future is increased amounts of rain before Christmas, and then that reduces the total amount of accumulation of snow that we see by Christmas.”
Most of Canada’s population lives in the southern part of the country, an area that has traditionally guaranteed snowy winters. That snow line has shifted further north, and many Canadian cities now experience winters with alternating rain and snow.
“Snow and ice are an iconic part of the Canadian landscape. We might have to look to warmer locations and see how they already celebrate holidays,” Dr. Mudryk said. “But it’s more than just the cultural impact. More importantly, there are also environmental and ecosystem impacts as well.”
The country’s three largest metropolitan areas illustrate how those national trends play out locally in very different winter climates.
MONTREAL
In Montreal, Christmas still reliably arrives with snow on the ground, but the blanket is thinning. Average snow depth on Dec. 25 has fallen by nearly 40 per cent in recent years compared with the long-term average since 1975. At the same time, December temperatures have warmed sharply by nearly three degrees, while average daily snowfall has declined.
The result is not fewer white Christmases, but a noticeably lighter snowpack than past generations would not have expected in one of Canada’s coldest major cities.
TORONTO
The long-term and recent average snow depth on Christmas Day remain fairly unchanged in Toronto, but that doesn’t mean uneventful year-to-year change. In fact, the city has swung between deep snowpacks and bare ground on Christmas over the past 50 years.
Toronto’s December temperatures have warmed by 2.1 degrees Celsius to -0.2°C in recent years, hovering right at the freezing point where precipitation can fall as either rain or snow. At these milder temperatures, Toronto’s white Christmas has become increasingly dependent on the timing of winter storms rather than consistent seasonal accumulation.
VANCOUVER
Christmas Day snow records in Vancouver tell a story of how unusual and brutal Arctic chills can dramatically reshape holiday experiences. A city known for its grey, rainy winters has seen snow on the ground only about half the time over the past five decades.
But when Arctic-origin cold air pushes much farther south than normal, the Lower Mainland can experience substantial snowfall – and those rare events have delivered Vancouver’s only true white Christmases. During 2008, Vancouver recorded the seconddeepest Christmas snowpack among 43 cities analyzed, just behind Saguenay, Que.
This article was written by Jordan Omstead and was published in the Globe & Mail on November 27, 2025.
Blasts of frigid Arctic air could send temperatures tumbling in December and herald the arrival of a more “traditional Canadian winter,” a meteorologist for the Weather Network predicts as it releases its seasonal outlook.
Most of Canada is expected to see near or colder than normal temperatures, and near or above normal precipitation and snow, says the network’s seasonal forecast for December, January and February.
There’s still some uncertainty about whether the second half of winter’s fury will be widespread or more focused on Western Canada, said meteorologist Doug Gillham.
What’s more certain is that it will be “December to remember,” he said. The forecast isn’t necessarily calling for a “historically severe winter,” Mr. Gillham said, but “it’s going to be a colder December and January than we’ve really become accustomed to seeing in many recent years.”
“When you step back and look at big picture, winter will show up this year and it’s going to show up in a big way to start the season.”
The country experienced its warmest winter on record two years ago ahead of last year’s more typical season, Mr. Gillham said. This year is expected to look more like last year, “but the signals for cold are actually a little bit stronger,” Mr. Gillham said.
One of those signals is the polar vortex, strong winds circling up to 50 kilometres above the Arctic that keep frigid air locked near the poles. A period of surging temperatures up in that part of the atmosphere is expected to disrupt the vortex and spill that cold out over Canada in December and January.
A second consecutive winter with a weak La Niña is also set to have a cooling influence, Mr. Gillham said. The climate pattern, tied to shifting patches of water in the Pacific Ocean, can often lead to colder and stormier conditions across much of Canada.
Put those two things together, the disrupted polar vortex and the weak La Niña, and the potential goes up for extended stretches of extreme temperatures, he said.
“So, if you enjoy winter activities, that’s good news. If you think, ‘I don’t need snow tires any more,’ well, you may want to rethink that,” Mr. Gillham said.
What counts as a typical or normal Canadian winter has changed over recent decades. While they fluctuate, average winter temperatures are about 3.7 degrees warmer now than in the mid-20th century as climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, reshapes Canada’s winter way of life.
This article was written by Edward Keenan and was published in the Toronto Star on June 27, 2025.
It’s like a joke, and Toronto wrote the punchline: First, the city opened pools early because it was so darn hot. Then, it closed a bunch of them for long stretches because it was so darn hot. It’s a skewer through the heart of the way things seem to work — or not work — at city hall.
Of course, explaining a joke usually ruins it. And Mayor Olivia Chow spent the better part of two days explaining it, including in a visit to the Star’s offices on Tuesday. “Could we have done better? Yes,” was the gist. There were some mitigating factors: staffing dozens of pools and making sure they had what they needed a week earlier than usual was challenging. And because the city is an employer, it’s bound by provincial standards that govern working conditions in extreme heat.
In any event, the hottest days of summer — the hottest days we’d usually expect any summer — had arrived well ahead of schedule, yet the closures were measured in mere hours. So maybe this doesn’t need to become the subject of political obsession. Except the pools are just one indication of how unprepared the city was for this week’s heat (the fact that Chow had to scramble a response including measures to bring back 24/7 cooling centres for homeless and other vulnerable populations is another).
And when you take a step back, it seems as if this lack of preparation for extreme weather is part of a pattern.
In February, we got some snow (granted, a lot of snow). The city was unable to clear the streets over the course of days and weeks. Last July, we got some rain (granted, a heck of lot of rain). The resultant flooding effectively broke the city. And every winter, there comes a serious cold snap that leaves us scrambling to keep homeless people from freezing in the street.
Here’s the thing about weather in Toronto: we get a lot of it, and in most of your major varieties. Heat, cold, rain, snow, ice, wind, humidity. Yet it always seems to catch us flatfooted, as if it were something we couldn’t have anticipated.
This is partly because the climate is changing, as my colleague Kate Allen has noted in her recent reporting about summer heat. As a result, we get more extreme versions of the weather we’re used to, and at different times than we once did. When the city flooded in 2013 (subway stations underwater, roads impassible, basements submerged), we heard it was caused by a “century storm,” the kind we could expect to see once every hundred years or so. But then we got similar storms in 2018 and 2024 (not to mention flooding in 2017 that shut down the Toronto Islands for a full season).
Century storms now appear to be halfdecade storms. We seem to get less snow overall than we used to, but we get more of it all at once. The heat is constantly breaking records, and scorchinghot days are no longer confined to July and August: they’re also popping up in June and September (when, incidentally, more kids are in classrooms without air conditioning).
When extreme weather hits, the mayor and other politicians are quick to tell us what’s gone wrong and what they’ll do differently next time. That includes Chow, who this week talked about hiring more lifeguards and creating more shade so pools can provide continuous service in heat waves, plus a motion to council for a report on reestablishing cooling centres and implementing other heatmitigation measures. We heard similar “what we’ve learned” talk in the aftermath of February’s snow and last summer’s flooding.
But at some point, we have to start anticipating these events, not scrambling to react to them. It’s going to get hot, and it’s going to get cold. It’s going to rain, and it’s going to snow. When the weather comes, what is it going to mean for life in the city? How is it going to affect the services government delivers? What measures can we put in place to minimize disruptions?
Chow’s initial move to open pools earlier and close them later was just such a measure. But the city evidently didn’t consider what its employees needed, even though Ontario’s labour ministry made that clear back in 2021: adequate shade and humidity monitoring, enough staff to allow for extended breaks, medical professionals to monitor conditions. Leaving the planning halfdone sometimes means the job doesn’t get done at all.
It’s fine for the city to diagnose what’s gone wrong after extreme weather has passed. But given the frequency with which we’re experiencing these emergencies, it’s time Toronto started planning for the next one rather than reacting to the last.
Peterborough, Simcoe in state of emergency as workers continue to clear debris, restore power
This article was written by Ben Cohen and was published in the Toronto Star on April 4, 2025.
Nearly 170,000 central and northern Ontario residents were still without power Thursday after about one million people were cut off by the past weekend’s ice storms, described as the worst in the province in nearly 30 years.
Five days later, states of emergency remain active in the hardest hit regions in Peterborough and Simcoe counties, where officials have urged people to stay inside while emergency crews tear down debris and work to restore hydro.
Experts say these storms will become more frequent as the climate changes. Some say expensive work should be undertaken to harden infrastructure against them by burying power lines. Options to keep trees standing are more limited.
Peterborough Mayor Jeff Leal sensed danger approaching Saturday as the rain was picking up.
“My wife and I could hear tree branches cracking and falling,” he told the Star on Thursday. “It’s quite an eerie sensation when it’s going on all around you.”
Come morning the floor of the forest near his home was covered in ice and splintered trees. He assembled a war room in the east end of the city, staffed with the heads of the local fire, police and social services, as well as provincial emergency management personnel.
Together they surveyed the damage. Rain torrents had been freezing on contact, each rivulet adding weight until the trees could bear it no more and collapsed into the streets. On Monday afternoon, Leal officially declared an emergency.
By Thursday afternoon, close to 30,000 Peterborough homes were still without power, down from more than 93,000 in the wake of the storm. Leal said it will take weeks to clear all the damage wrought. The state of emergency will remain at least until electricity is restored, which should be by the weekend, according to Hydro One.
Hydro One has 3,800 people on the ground working to reconnect more than 170,000 Ontarians in what has been described as the worst storm since 1998 when up to 100 millimetres of freezing rain and ice pellets hit eastern Ontario and Quebec for five days, killing an estimated 35 people.
On Thursday, Niagara hydro workers deployed to Peterborough. Premier Doug Ford said he planned to visit some of the affected areas on Friday, including the storm command centre in Orillia.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Ford told reporters at Queen’s Park on Thursday morning. “We’re working full out again, we have the teams out there from emergency management, the Ontario Corps, warming centres, foods brought in.”
Humanitarian organizations are also in Peterborough, working to free people trapped in their homes by downed trees and feed the hungry. Peterborough also converted its public transit buses into mobile warming centres. “The people have been through a lot,” said Leal. “Particularly the more vulnerable seniors, who because of the power outages have become trapped in their apartments. But everybody is pitching in our time of need.”
It’s been a “long year” for the people of Orillia, another of the cities most devastated by the ice storm, resident Amber McGarvey told Simcoe.com Wednesday.
“From the devastating fire downtown that destroyed so much, to the recordsetting snow levels that caused additional damage, and now this storm, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed at times,” she said.
McGarvey described to Simcoe.com reporter Ian Adams the “tense, anxious night” she spent praying a tree wouldn’t crash through her ceiling on the night of the storm. It “felt like it could go on forever,” she said.
Scientists say it won’t be long before she experiences another.
“Unfortunately it’s one result of global warming in an intensifying hydrological cycle,” said Kent Moore, professor of theoretical geophysics of climate change at the University of Toronto Mississauga, in an email to the Star.
The rain cycle — evaporation, condensation, precipitation — is speeding up because a hotter atmosphere sucks up more water vapour. This ends up triggering both more droughts and more deluges.
“Warm air can hold more water vapour and water vapour is a source of energy for the weather systems.”
He said this explains the backtoback historic rainfalls Toronto saw over the summer, as well. How does a warming climate make freezing rain more frequent? By making snow less frequent.
“If it had been a bit colder, we would have had a snow event,” said Moore. “Bad but nothing like the damage to infrastructure we experienced (from the freezing rain).”
As these storms proliferate, it will typically be more rural areas — with more trees to topple — that suffer most, said Joseph Desloges, professor of geography and earth sciences at U of T, in an email to the Star.
“Areas away from the shorelines of the great lakes are generally cooler so rain can be more prone to freezing the further north and east you go from the GTA,” he added.
Hundreds of thousands still lack power as cleanup continues
This article was written by the Canadian Press and was published in the Toronto Star on April 1, 2025.
Hundreds of thousands of people across Ontario were still without power Monday after freezing rain coated swaths of the province with thick layers of ice, with outages expected to last in some areas as storm cleanup continues.
An outage map from provincial utility Hydro One showed more than 396,000 homes and businesses remained without power as of early Monday evening — and some areas near Georgian Bay may not have power restored until Friday.
The map also showed that crews have been able to restore power to 532,000 customers since the start of the storm over the weekend.
“It’s all hands on deck as crews continue to work alongside our contractors to restore power to customers,” the utility said. “While we continue to mobilize crews from other parts of the province, we anticipate it will take several days to restore all customers.”
Hydro One said people should stay at least 10 metres away from any fallen power line even if it does not appear to be live as crews continue their work.
Ontario Provincial Police said warming centres opened in Orillia and Tay Township, which are among the hardest hit areas of central Ontario.
The freezing rain, along with high winds on Monday, have “caused significant damage to trees and power lines throughout,” they said, noting that there have been at least 38 road closures in central Ontario due to the storm.
The cities of Orillia and Peterborough, as well as the cottage country district of Muskoka and the Township of OroMedonte, all declared states of emergency.
Police said Monday afternoon that parts of Orillia are starting to have power restored, but the region remains under a state of emergency and residents are urged to stay sheltered in place due to falling trees and power lines.
Orillia fire Chief Chris Ferry said residents can expect power outages for up to 48 more hours.
“I would say we have thousands of trees damaged or down in the city, as well as our entire electrical grid was out,” Ferry said in a phone interview. “We’re just asking people to avoid any of the dangerous hazards of overhanging limbs and trees.”
Ferry added that city crews have pushed debris off the streets and continue to clear up trees, as groups of volunteers help with wellness checks and cleanup. The city has also opened a relief station at a local recreation centre where residents can shelter and access food, he said.
Several school boards in the impacted area, including those in Simcoe County and Sudbury, closed their schools and childcare services on Monday due to the ice storm. Many businesses were also closed. Environment Canada has warned that the storm system is moving east.
The weather agency said parts of Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were under freezing rain and storm warnings Monday.
In Quebec, more than 13,000 HydroQuébec customers remained in the dark as of Monday evening, as crews worked to restore power.
This article was written by Nicole Thompson and was published in the Globe & Mail on March 31, 2025.
A man uses a chainsaw to cut down ice-covered tree branches in Meaford, Ont., on Sunday. Provincial police urged people to stay off the roads, warning the melting ice made the roads wet and slippery and caused localized flooding.
Freezing rain that coated parts of Ontario in thick layers of ice, downing branches and power lines, left hundreds of thousands of residents without electricity on Sunday as the storm headed east.
More than 350,000 customers were affected by outages early Sunday afternoon, according to Hydro One, Ontario’s provincial utility, and some residents said they couldn’t imagine the lights coming back any time soon.
“At the very end of our driveway, we had a hydro pole completely ripped in half because trees went down and took the wires down,” said Janelle Baker, who lives outside of Bracebridge, Ont., and lost power early Saturday morning.
“Our driveway and our road are completely impassable at this point.”
Ms. Baker said she spent Saturday night listening to the sounds of trees crashing down.
“It’s just this intense creaking, and then falling,” she said. “It’s very eerie, almost. You can kind of hear it because we’re out by the water, too, so the ones coming down over the water were very loud.”
When she went outside on Sunday morning, she described the sight as “carnage,” as though a tornado had blown through.
“I’m originally from Nova Scotia, so I’ve seen a lot of pretty crazy weather events, but I’ve never seen anything like this ever before,” she said.
Hydro One said it had restored power to more than 115,000 customers by Sunday morning, but there was still a lot of work to be done.
Kelly O’Loan in Barrie, Ont., was among those who got electricity back, but not before she spent hours manually bailing out her sump pump by candlelight.
“It was a very scary and treacherous night because you could hear the ice against the windows, and any time the wind blew just a little bit, you would hear things move and you’re just praying that the trees don’t fall,” she said.
I’m originally from Nova Scotia, so I’ve seen a lot of pretty crazy weather events, but I’ve never seen anything like this ever before. JANELLE BAKER LIVES OUTSIDE OF BRACEBRIDGE, ONT.
Provincial police urged people to stay off the roads if possible, saying the melting ice had led to wet, slippery roads and localized flooding.
“If you’re travelling north, expect delays and detours. There’s detours north of Barrie because of downed power lines and fallen trees,” said Sergeant Kerry Schmidt.
Police shared photos of power lines hanging low, pulled down by the weight of the ice that coated them.
In Georgian Bluffs, Ont., along the Georgian Bay, provincial police said a tree fell onto the road and landed on live hydro wires on Saturday night, starting a fire.
A news release from the force’s central division early Sunday said there had been additional calls for service because of the weather, including injuries caused by falling trees.
Environment Canada also issued weather warnings for parts of Quebec, where freezing rain is expected to continue into Sunday evening, and New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, where it could develop overnight.
The national forecaster said between five to 10 millimetres of freezing rain could fall in New Brunswick before a warm front moves in late Monday morning.
This article was written by Elissa Mendes and Vanessa Tiberio, and was published in the Toronto Star on March 30, 2025.
More than 28,000 people in and around the GTA were affected by power outages, according to electric utility company Alectra, which services the GTA. The majority of these outages occurred in Barrie, with a few smaller, scattered outages in Vaughan and other parts of the GTA, Alectra told the Star.
“Freezing rain has caused many tree branches to fall onto power lines in several areas, and our teams are responding to multiple locations while navigating challenging and hazardous conditions,” Alectra spokesperson Sean Guedes said.
Multiple fallen trees took down power lines in Barrie, leaving nearly 13,000 customers without power, he said.
“Given the ongoing impact of the storm and continued infrastructure damage, we are not able to provide an estimated time for full restoration at this point,” Guedes said.
Customers who come across downed lines are warned to avoid them and treat them as live and dangerous.
Outside of the GTA, there were more than 1,000 power outages affecting more than 115,000 customers by Saturday evening, according to Hydro One’s outage map. Tree limbs and branches weighed down by ice, and damaging power lines and equipment on electrical poles, were the problem.
“Crews are out in full force, working as safely and quickly as possible to restore power to customers in central and eastern Ontario,” said Hydro One.
Hydro One recommends residents check the outage map on its website for uptodate information.
In Toronto, only a few brief outages were reported, affecting about 20 customers, Toronto Hydro told the Star.
Residents from across Ontario took to social media on Saturday to share how the storm was affecting them.
“Second round of the ice storm is hitting Belleville, Ontario now,” said one X user just before 5:30 p.m., sharing a photo of an iceencrusted cedar branch.
“The sound of ice and large branches crashing onto my roof every half hour or so is unnerving. We are lit only by candles, no heat, all food lost. 19 hours and counting,” said another X user at about 9:45 p.m.
“Lucky we still have power. One of the few in the area,” said another X poster just before 10 p.m. “Can hear trees or big branches coming down.”
Drivers are being warned to slow down and take extra care due to slippery conditions caused by the freezing rain.
“Right now traffic is moving slowly, but as it gets dark and it cools, be ready for ice,” OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt told the Star Saturday afternoon, adding that salters have been out on the roads across the GTA to prepare for icy conditions.
In the past 24 hours, Schmidt said there have been 30 to 40 crashes in the GTA, which is “insignificant to what we would typically see.”
As the city continues digging out, melting snow puts urgency on removal efforts
This article was written by Kate Allen and was published in the Toronto Star on February 27, 2025.
When Jason Thistlethwaite advised a friend to toss pantyhose full of road salt on his roof, it might have seemed like a goofy activity. But the goal was serious: to create a channel that allows water to flow down from where it had been trapped behind an ice dam blocking the gutter, preventing costly damage.
Toronto residents still have snow on the brain as the city slowly shovels out from backtoback blizzards. But experts like Thistlethwaite, a professor at the University of Waterloo’s Climate Risk Research Group, are already looking ahead to the next threat: the risk of a winter flood.
Winter floods aren’t common in southern Ontario, but can happen when temperatures fluctuate — and can be extremely dangerous. Seven years ago, a February flood deluged parts of Brantford, Cambridge and other municipalities along the Grand River after an early melt led to ice jams and the river burst its banks. The floods caused more than $40 million in damage across the province and prompted Brantford to declare a state of emergency. Most tragically, a threeyearold boy was killed after his mother drove a car through a washedout road and they were swept into the river.
With rain and warm weather in the forecast, the city’s snow removal efforts took on added urgency. Mayor Olivia Chow called the pace of that operation “unacceptable” on Tuesday and said she had asked the city manager to review options for deploying staff from other departments to clear snow, “as well as support flood prevention efforts.”
The erratic weather patterns associated with climate change may make an already unpredictable type of winter flood even more uncertain, Canadian research shows.
“Flood season used to be in the spring in Canada, but now it just seems like it’s an all around problem,” says Thistlethwaite.
Urban flooding in the winter happens for the same basic reason as it does in the summer: more water falls on the ground than can be drained away by a city’s sewers and other stormwater infrastructure, letting it flow into houses, schools and businesses instead.
But unlike the kind of storm Toronto experienced in July, which caused a billion dollars in damage, the exact mechanisms for a February flood are a little different. While the ground was saturated from previous rainfall before the July flood, the cold winter Toronto saw this year, with few thaws, means the earth is solidly frozen.
“Frozen ground conditions — the sponge that is our city — can absorb less water. So then it challenges those drainage systems,” says David Kellershohn, associate director of engineering services for the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA). The condition of the snow also plays a role, with earlierseason, fluffier snow acting more like a sponge, and older snow acting more like a slippery, icehard cap.
Many catchbasins — the drains in streets that allow water to run off into city sewers — are also buried below small mountains of snow and ice. A city spokesperson said that 14 crews are working “around the clock” to clear these catchbasins, and advised residents to call 311 to report blocked ones. Thistlethwaite advises that any “ponding” should be dealt with immediately: “That water shouldn’t be there — it should be moving, it should be draining.”
Roof ice dams like the one Thistlethwaite helped his friend fix are another unique winter flood risk. Because many older homes are poorly insulated, heat escapes through the roof and causes snow to melt, running down to the gutters where it refreezes. This icy dam then blocks new meltwater from running off, letting it sit on the roof and seep into ceilings. (One telltale sign: fat icicles.)
Last year was the costliest for insurers in Canadian history, Thistlethwaite noted, estimating that roof damage claims like the one he was trying to help his friend avoid are likely already adding to that total this year.
“People are getting a ton of damage to their roofs this spring. That is really going to drive up insurance claims, for sure.”
While property damage is a problem, the most serious concern in winter flooding is the risk to human life — a risk that materialized in 2018 after the Grand River flooded, swamping several municipalities.
Threeyearold Kaden Young was buckled into a car seat in his mother’s car as she drove past a roadclosed sign late at night and attempted to ford a washedout road.
The current dragged the car downstream; Kaden’s mother survived, but the toddler did not. She was charged with multiple counts including impaired driving and eventually pleaded guilty to criminal negligence causing death.
The Grand River flood was caused by a phenomenon called an ice jam. Warm weather, rainfall and melting snow led to the breakup of ice on the river, which then flowed downstream until it got stuck, leading to water backing up behind it.
“Ice jam flooding is just harder to predict because we don’t know where the ice will bunch up in a river,” says Kellershohn.
“It’s also slippery, and there’s a lot of pressure that builds up in those ice jams, which means the ice can move suddenly and in unpredictable ways. So if you’re too close to the ice jam and it shifts, that’s the way you can get injured or hurt.”
The last time a notable ice jam occurred in the TRCA’s jurisdiction was in March 2019, when 85 homes in Bolton were evacuated because an ice jam caused flooding on the Humber River. While the TRCA doesn’t have flood warnings in place currently, Kellershohn still cautioned residents to be observant near rivers, noting that most are completely frozen right now and some are frozen all the way to the bottom, making the timing of an ice breakup even more uncertain.
The conservation authority has a lower threshold of concern for rainfall in winter than it does in summer, he adds: with 10 to 15 centimetres of precipitation in the forecast, “we start to pay attention.”
Canadian research has indicated that ice jams, an alreadyunpredictable phenomenon, may get more unpredictable with climate change. A study in Quebec found that while rivers in the south of the province may see less ice and therefore less risk of ice jams, ones elsewhere in the province may experience more frequent spring and winter floods, raising the risk of ice jams, sometimes significantly. Another study found that changes in the timing, location and frequency of ice jams could have major impacts on everything from shipping, hydroelectric production, flooding and ecology.
“We’ve really got to hope — as much as people don’t want to hear it — for a bit of a cooler transition to spring, so that there’s time for all this stuff to melt,” says Thistlethwaite.
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