Weather-related causes were to blame for a series of downtown outages that had affected scores of homes throughout the Greater Toronto Area, including the downtown core, and had left many in the dark.
- Around 8:50PM on Saturday night, residence in Queen Street West and College Street West were without power. Around 1500 Toronto Hydro customers were affected.
- Along Highway 401, from Lawrence Ave to Bayview and the Don Mills area also saw blackouts.
- Outages had affected customers in along Shaw St. and also in Palmerston Blvd.
Environment Canada had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Saturday evening but had lifted it shortly before 6PM. Despite lifting the warning, the weather continued to cause complications and had resulted in power failures. Heavy-falling precipitation had also resulted in an advisory warning from Toronto Region Conservation Area. They had warned of rising waterway levels and advised that people should avoid them, at all costs, as the risk for potential flooding in low-level areas was elevated.
The wild weather fluxes in Toronto is occurring in the midst of humid conditions and fluctuating temperatures due to a slow-starting spring. Toronto Hydro crews were responsive and had minimized the impact of the outages in disparate parts of the city and had quick turnaround time in restoring power. They were keeping the public up-to-date in real-time, providing status updates and answering questions on their Twitter page.